Pastor Brian McLaren came to Louisville this week, and his appearance at the Presbyterian Seminary has made the local paper. McLaren appeared with Diana Butler Bass and Marcus Borg at the seminary’s annual Festival of Theology. There’s not really anything new here that we didn’t already know about McLaren, but it’s worth taking a look at the reporter’s description of what he said.
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A Faux Compromise on Same-sex ‘Marriage’
A couple of weeks ago, two law professors from Pepperdine University (Douglas W. Kmiec and Shelley Ross Saxer) asked the California State Supreme Court to consider a compromise position on the issue of gay marriage (read the article here). The court was reviewing the recent passage of Proposition 8 in California, and Kmiec and Saxer came up with an idea that they thought would please all sides. Essentially, their idea comes down to this.
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Editorial Critiques Obama’s Stem Cell Policy
The editors at the Washington Post are holding President Obama’s feet to fire concerning his broad support for embryonic stem cell research. They say that Obama cannot rely on scientists for answers to moral questions: “This is in large part an ethical question. Mr. Obama is right to turn to scientists for advice on the matter, but he should not hide behind them in making the ultimate decision.” Read the rest here.
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Calvinism Changing the World
According to TIME magazine, Calvinism is one of the top “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now,” ranking at number 3. Here’s the list.
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Obama and ‘Laboratory Plantations’
Yesterday I wrote about President Obama’s executive order that forces tax-payers to fund the destruction of innocent human life. Today, Ben Mitchell comments on the irony that President Obama would be the one to give this order. He writes: “If anyone should see the irony in all this it should be the nation’s first African-American president. Of all people, he should know the lessons of our history. The consequences are disastrous when one group of human beings is regarded as less than human in order to serve what other people think is the greater good. American chattel slavery certainly served the ‘greater good’ of those plantation owners in the South.
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Destroying Human Life at Tax-payers’ Expense
Today, President Barack Obama signed an executive order lifting the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Let’s be clear about what this means. Tax-payers will now be forced to pay for research that destroys innocent human life in its earliest stages. You wouldn’t have known what was at stake had you listened to President Obama’s remarks today just before he signed the order. In fact, you wouldn’t even have known that human life was on the line at all. Here is the justification that President Obama gave for signing what amounts to a death-warrant for embryonic human life.
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Southern Seminary Graduate Slain in Church
You have probably already seen the horrible news from Maryville, Illinois today about a hooded man who gunned down a pastor during church this morning. The details of the incident are not yet clear, but the pastor’s name was Dr. Fred Winter. He leaves behind a wife and two daughters and a congregation that he has led for 22 years. Dr. Winter was a graduate of Southern Seminary, and his doctor of ministry supervisors have made some comments about Dr. Winter here. Please pray for Dr. Winter’s family, for the two who were injured trying to subdue the gunman, for the church, and for the gunman himself.
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25 Things I Hate about Facebook
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John Piper says “Over my dead body”
A female high school student in Minnesota is competing in wrestling competitions against male students, and John Piper has some counter-cultural advice to fathers about it. ‘Come on, dads, have some courage. Just say, “Over my dead body are you going to wrestle a girl.” Of course, they will call you prudish. But everything in you knows better. ‘Yes, I am talking to the boys’ fathers. If the girls’ fathers don’t care how boys manhandle their daughters, you will have to take the lead. Give your sons a bigger nobler vision of what it is to be a man. Men don’t fight against women. They fight for women. ‘They called…
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Proposition 8 Revisited
Amanda Shaw reports on the First Things blog that the Supreme Court of California is considering the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative passed last November that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. At issue is how marriage should be defined vis a vis human rights. Shaw writes: “To hear media accounts of legal rights, a particular definition of marriage is assumed, and assumed to be fixed, while that definition is precisely what is in question. Today, the proposition is being challenged on the basis that it was improperly posed and passed as an amendment, while in fact—by supposedly restricting minority rights—it falls into…