Interfaith Religious News Service

Is the Bible Sexist?

Rev Ed Crabtree — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:39:18 +0000

October 6, 2008

New research claims Bible’s negative stance on women is a myth
by, Bess Twiston Davies

Delilah is dangerous, Jezebel, wicked, and as for Eve… Whether they are temptresses, harlots or simply Old Testament chattels, women (it is often argued) get a raw deal in Scripture, with the odd saintly exception (the virgin Mary). (more…)

Developing ‘Conservative radicals’ in Christian higher education

Rev Ed Crabtree — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 03:53:24 +0000

By David Gushee
Thursday, 14 August 2008
(ABP) — In his recent book, The Great Awakening, Jim Wallis suggests that it is time to move beyond the conservative vs. liberal paradigm to a framework he calls conservative radicalism. This is true in American culture, in evangelicalism and certainly in Baptist life. As the new school year dawns, I find myself increasingly clear that this is the vision I want to try to impart to seminary students and undergraduates here at Mercer. Perhaps others in Christian higher education will find it relevant. (more…)

God’s Agenda is Not Ours

Rev Ed Crabtree — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 03:33:25 +0000

from Washington Post “On Faith”

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/cal_thomas/

All politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, love to use God to baptize their political agendas. In August, 1994, President Bill Clinton addressed an African-American congregation in Maryland. Clinton told them it was “the will of God” that Congress pass his anti-crime bill. He didn’t say if God would accept any amendments.

(more…)

World’s Smallest Cathedral

Rev Ed Crabtree — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:44:41 +0000

Small wonder

A young bishop doesn’t just want to care for the “World’s Smallest Cathedral” — he wants to buy the place and return it to the church.

Linda Leicht
News-Leader
Springfield MO
http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080830/LIFE07/808300331

Highlandville — When Bishop Karl Pruter entrusted the tiny Cathedral of the Prince of Peace to the Rev. Brian Brown last year, the young bishop promised to care for the building and the ministry.

Brown now hopes to secure the future of the “World’s Smallest Cathedral” by raising the funds to purchase the 238-square-foot building and the adjoining house, the former rectory where Pruter, who died in November, had lived. (more…)

Southern Baptists Tackle Shrinking Numbers

Rev Ed Crabtree — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:31:12 +0000

Tue, Apr. 29, 2008 Posted: 14:53:49 PM EST

Reaching the lost has taken on new meaning for the 16 million Southern Baptists who may be on the brink of decline. (more…)

Are the Quakers Going Pagan?

Rev Ed Crabtree — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:24:27 +0000

The liberal end of the Society of Friends has long had members who denied God’s existence or Jesus’ divinity. Now hundreds of pagans call Quakerism home. Matthew Streib, Religion News Service
When his partner died in 2004, Kevin-Douglas Olive reached a crossroads in his faith. Even though he had been a Quaker for almost two decades and put his trust in Jesus, he began to explore other ways of tapping into the divine.

“I had this experience of (my partner) after death, and he spoke to me and woke me up out of my sleep,” Olive says. “It freaked me out, because I really didn’t believe in that stuff; … my faith in God had disappeared when my partner died.” (more…)

Irish Church Leaders Barred from Jerusalem’s Western Wall

Rev Ed Crabtree — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:20:09 +0000

JERUSALEM (AP) - Leaders of Ireland’s main Christian churches were barred from praying at Jerusalem’s Western Wall Thursday because they refused to remove the crosses they were wearing. (more…)

Chilean Catholics Protest Court Ruling against Free Contraception Program

Rev Ed Crabtree — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:18:05 +0000

April 25, 2008
Hundreds of Chileans announced that they will leave the Catholic Church on April 29, in protest of the Vatican involvement with a court’s anti-contraception ruling. Chile’s Constitutional Court outlawed President Michelle Bachelet’s free emergency contraception distribution program on April 18. The court ruled that free distribution of emergency contraception was unconstitutional. According to Women’s eNews the court ruled that emergency contraception could “endanger a recently fertilized egg.” (more…)

God’s Hand of Protection

Rev Ed Crabtree — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:14:17 +0000

5/2/08
Recently, as we were returning from a church in Ohio, we were reminded that God is always watching over us. We had stopped in Bowling Green, KY, to get something to eat. As we were trying to make it back to I-65, we were repeatedly delayed. Once we finally got onto the interstate, we encountered the most horrific accident I have ever witnessed. Apparently, a large truck hit a motorcycle. Without going into graphic detail, it was a horrible scene. The accident had just happened, and neither the police nor the ambulance had arrived at the scene. Almost immediately we knew God was the one who delayed us. Otherwise we would have likely been right there. (more…)

Rich-Poor Income Gap Widening To Chasm

Rev Ed Crabtree — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:13:01 +0000

May 3, 2008
(CBS) There have always been “haves” and “have-nots” in the United States, but over the past three decades, the gap between them has gotten a lot wider, statistics from congressional numbers crunchers show.

According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, income for the bottom half of American households rose six percent since 1979 but, through 2005, the income of the top one percent skyrocketed - by 228 percent. (more…)

Katrina, Rita and the Houma: A Nation in Recovery

Rev Ed Crabtree — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:10:32 +0000

HOUMA, La.—
Up the bayou. Down the bayou. Across the bayou.

For a visitor to this stretch of Louisiana, those are the directions you quickly learn while traveling the waterways and roadways of this southeastern region of this Southern state.

For those at home in the bayou, no weathervane is needed to guide you. No compass readings are required. There is the water’s landmark, the signpost of the bayou to tell you which way to drive, which way to travel.

Louisiana may be best known as the home of Mardi Gras and the football Saints, as a stirring pot of jazz and blues and zesty cuisine. Thanks to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it may forever be the memory stick for disaster, for images of broken levees and a stifling Superdome, and for tales of heroism and despair in now-familiar places like the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

But it is also Indian Country, land of the mostly forgotten. It is home to the United Houma Nation, nearly half of whose members were displaced up and down the bayou, their homes battered by hurricane winds or flooded by avalanches of water. (more…)

Tired Labels and Worn-out Wineskins

Rev Ed Crabtree — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:06:28 +0000

4/17/08
Would you visit a church called The Holy Assembly of the Fire-Baptized Brethren? Probably not, because it sounds elitist, self-righteous and really old-fashioned. Your unchurched neighbors would most likely drive a few extra miles to avoid passing the place.
Yet many church names today sound almost as strange and unwelcoming. We insist on using religious vocabulary from previous centuries to define ourselves, and then we wonder why people consider us out of touch. (more…)

Methodists Poised to Move Beyond Gay Issue

Rev Ed Crabtree — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:03:42 +0000

By Cary McMullen THE LEDGER
FORT WORTH, Texas

Advocates of gay rights wonder whether this might be the year when the United Methodist Church drops its sanction against homosexuality. A proposal that may be voted on today at the church’s General Conference would make the 7.9 million-member church the largest to withhold moral judgment about gay sexual activity. (more…)

Church reaping what it sowed

Rev Ed Crabtree — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:00:03 +0000

by Justin Marville

Under the theme Building The Community Through Caring, Sharing, the Shorey Village New Testament Church of God has been stressing to its members the importance of supporting the community through farming.

Now the residents of the district are literally reaping the benefits. (more…)

God’s Profits

Rev Ed Crabtree — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:40:46 +0000

How The Religious Right Uses The ‘Prosperity Gospel’ To Win Foot Soldiers And Continue Its ‘Culture War’
Researcher Sarah Posner has been following the Religious Right for several years and writes a blog called The FundamentaList for The American Prospect. Her new book, God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters (PoliPointPress, 2008) examines the role advocates of the “prosperity gospel” play in the Religious Right.

16/04/08 “ICH” — - Posner talked recently with Church & State about her research and the status of the Religious Right today. (more…)

Winonan sees Womenpriest ceremony as an act of faith

Rev Ed Crabtree — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:14:59 +0000

By Darrell Ehrlick | Lee Newspapers
WINONA, Minn. — Kathy Redig’s most profound act of faith might be the one that gets her condemned, if not excommunicated from the church she’s been a part of her whole life.
She claims the Roman Catholic Church, after May 4, may not claim her.
That’s when Redig plans to be ordained in Winona by the Roman Catholic Womenpriests, a worldwide organization that has publicly ordained 23 priests and four bishops since 2002.
But Redig isn’t going ahead with ordination to put herself at odds with church leaders and church law. She says she wants to bring more people to the church she loves. (more…)

In court: Church’s use of former Wal-Mart

Rev Ed Crabtree — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:13:48 +0000

By Martin King Apr 9, 2008

CARLINVILLE, Ill. (BP)–Carlinville Southern Baptist Church “can do everything we want in the new facility except use it for worship,” the church’s First Amendment attorney, Daniel Dalton, said.

Dalton made the statement following a federal court ruling allowing the Illinois church to remodel a former Wal-Mart to accommodate the growing congregation. (more…)

Judge: Teen can attend St. X over dad’s objection

Rev Ed Crabtree — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:12:53 +0000

April 14, 2008

By Andrew Wolfson

Fourteen-year-old Michael Ryan may attend St. Xavier High School, despite the objections of his atheist father, an Oldham County family court judge has ruled.

In a decision made public today, Judge Tim Feeley said he was persuaded that it is in Michael’s best interest to attend St. X, in part because that’s where he wants to go. (more…)

New Jewish Lobby Seeks to Redefine “Pro-Israel”

Rev Ed Crabtree — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:11:24 +0000

by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 15 (IPS) - A new group of prominent U.S. Jews who believe that the so-called “Israel Lobby” has been dominated for too long by neo-conservatives and other Likud-oriented hawks has launched a new organisation to help fund political candidates who favour a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a stronger U.S. role in achieving it.
Almost two years in the making, the “J Street” project plans to spend some 1.5 million dollars — about half of which has been pledged to date — in its first year of operation, a portion of which will go to supporting half a dozen Congressional campaigns for candidates who share its pro-peace and pro-Israel views. (more…)

Emergent Church Leaders’ InterSpirituality Talks Raise Flags

Rev Ed Crabtree — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:09:57 +0000

The participation of emergent church leaders in an interfaith dialogue raised flags for some conservative Christians who have been concerned over a growing cooperation of emergent church leaders with New Spirituality/New Age leaders. (more…)