Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse than the fact that the Mavs lost last night, I came across this story in the Dallas Morning News: “Pastor turns service into pep rally for God, Mavs.”Apparently, this pastor in this Dallas area doesn’t know the difference between a worship service and a pep rally. Can you guess what his justification is for profaning Sunday morning worship? It’s pretty predictable. “We put God in a box. Why can’t we bring life into the house of worship? More people will come to church if you have these kinds of things.”
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It’s a Baptist Thing, and E. J. Dionne Doesn’t Get It
Actually, it’s not just E. J. Dionne who’s offering an incorrect analysis of Frank Page’s election to the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Dionne and others are mistaking the dark horse for a trojan horse that would signal the beginning of the end of the conservative movement in the SBC. In a Washington Post editorial today, Dionne writes: Page’s upset victory could be very significant, both to the nation’s religious life and to politics. He defeated candidates supported by the convention’s staunchly conservative establishment, which has dominated the organization since the mid-1980s. His triumph is one of many signs that new breezes are blowing through the broader evangelical…
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TIME Magazine Credits Bloggers for New SBC President
Have you seen TIME Magazine’s analysis of Frank Page’s election to the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention? Here’s the headline and the lead of the story written by David VanBiema: The Bloggers’ Favorite Southern Baptist: The upset victory of a non-anointed candidate to lead America’s largest Protestant denomination signals the growing power of online activists, even in old-line churches . . . For those who follow the internal politics of the Southern Baptist Convention . . . the most interesting news out of their annual meeting, held this week in Greensboro, N.C., is that bloggers elected a president (source). I don’t think that this analysis of the election is…
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Derek Webb & CT on “Christian” Music
Readers of this blog know that Derek Webb and I are not on the same page politically and sometimes theologically (previous posts). Nevertheless, in an interview with Relevant magazine Webb has some salient reflections on the so-called “Christian” music industry. Here are the money lines: The whole secular/Christian thing is a total fiction. Don’t let your local Christian bookstore do your thinking for you and believe that everything they have there for sale is good and spiritually beneficial to you. If anything, we have proven that the Church unfortunately is identified with really poor art. The Church certainly does not have the market cornered on beauty. A lot of what…
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Ann Coulter Needs to Repent
I haven’t read the context of Ann Coulter’s remarks; her book won’t be released until tomorrow. So all I have seen so far are the excerpts in the Associated Press.According to the AP, Coulter’s new book has some pretty nasty things to say about a certain group of liberal-leaning 9-11 widows. The AP contains the following description of Coulter’s remarks: Coulter writes in a new book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” that a group of New Jersey widows whose husbands perished in the World Trade Center act “as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them.”She also wrote, “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much” (source). Like…
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Banning Same-Sex “Marriage”: Politics As Usual?
You have probably already heard that the Senate is set to debate an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would define marriage as the union between one man and one woman. In his weekly radio address last Saturday, President Bush came out strongly in favor of the amendment. He said: Marriage is the most enduring and important human institution, honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. Marriage cannot be cut off from its cultural,…
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Why Europe Hates America
Do you want to know why folks abroad don’t like America? It’s because of reports like this one in the BBC: The BBC has uncovered new video evidence that US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians (source). That line is the lead from the story, but it’s not even the most provocative part (nor necessarily inaccurate). In one of the paragraphs that follow, the story suggests that this kind of atrocity is routine for American troops. In reporting the announcement that U.S. soldiers will be undergoing “ethical training” as a result of the killing, the BBC reports: The news of ethical training…
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Abortion Nonsense: Ramesh Ponnuru Taken To Task
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Peter Berkowitz reviews Ramesh Ponnuru’s anti-abortion tour de force The Party of Death. In this critical review, Berkowitz puts forth the same pro-abortion arguments that have been refuted time and again by pro-lifers. He writes: Invisible to the naked eye, lacking body or brain, feeling neither pleasure nor pain, radically dependent for life support, the early embryo, though surely part of the human family, is distant and different enough from a flesh-and-blood newborn that when the early embryo’s life comes into conflict with other precious human goods or claims, the embryo’s life may need to give way (source). The problem with Berkowitz’s critique is that…
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Something I Will Never Get Over
It’s Memorial Day weekend, and there are many war movies being shown on television. Tonight, I am watching “Saving Private Ryan,” which I believe is probably the best WWII movie ever made (and I have seen many).Every time I watch this movie, I’m reminded of something I will never quite get over. In 1998, “Saving Private Ryan” was nominated for best picture along with “Life Is Beautiful,” “Thin Red Line,” “Elizabeth,” and “Shakespeare in Love.” Believe it or not, “Shakespeare in Love” won best picture and beat out “Saving Private Ryan,” to my lasting chagrin. Now you tell me, which movie has proven to be the classic and which one…
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Gandalf Says the Bible Is Fiction
Just in case you didn’t see this, I wanted to put it here. In a Today Show interview last week, Gandalf (a.k.a. Ian McKellen) said that the Bible is fiction. Matt Lauer asked the cast how they would have felt if the DaVinci Code movie had included a disclaimer at the beginning saying that the story was fiction. McKellen replied with the following: Well, I’ve often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction. I mean, walking on water, it takes an act of faith. And I have faith in this movie. Not that it’s true, not that it’s factual, but that it’s a…