Category: U.S.

Recent public statements by megachurch pastors in response to a scandal-ridden peer reveal differing perspectives on repentance, restoration and ministerial ethics.

Last September, four men—all former members of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta—claimed the church’s pastor, Eddie Long, used gifts, trips and money to coerce them into engaging in sex acts with him. Although no criminal charges were filed, Long settled with his accusers last month, leading some church leaders who had previously reserved judgment to speak out.

On June 5, fellow Atlanta pastor Creflo Dollar urged his World Changers Church to refrain from gossiping about the Long scandal and warned disgruntled New Birth members that they would not find a listening ear at his church. 

“That preacher’s still anointed to do what he was called to. He just had a wreck. The blood will take care of his issue just like it will take care of yours,” Dollar stated. “And I just can’t believe that people would leave their preacher because he had a wreck, instead of praying for him.”

AP Photo/Chris Gardner New York just passed its historic gay marriage law. Could Minnesota be next? Not if the Minnesota … Read More

In the wake of New York passing a gay marriage bill last Friday, there are many voices crying out. Some … Read More

AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast

Rod Blagojevich. It’s a name that will go down in Chicago political history as scandalous, especially after he was convicted Monday on a variety of corruption charges. He becomes the third Illinois governor to go down in legal flames.

Despite Blagojevich steadfastly and very publicly denying all the charges against him, including the allegation that he tried to sell then President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat, he now faces up to 300 years in prison.

Blagojevich’s book The Governor hit store shelves in September 2009. In it, he said his accusers are lying. After deliberating for 10 days, 12 jurors felt otherwise.

Operation Rescue is calling on President Obama to withdraw the nomination of Steve Six to the Federal Appeals Court.

“Based on the lack of support by Senators from Six’s home state and Six’s proven willingness to allow political and personal biases influence his professional decisions, President Obama should spare the nation a protracted and divisive battle over this nominee and withdraw his name from consideration,” says Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.

Kansas Senators Jerry Moran and Past Roberts have each issued statements opposing the Six nomination. Votes on his confirmation have been delayed several times in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Six is a pro-abortion Democrat who was appointed by former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who now serves as Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, to finish a term as Kansas Attorney General after Paul Morrison was forced to resign in disgrace amid an unseemly sex and abortion corruption scandal. Six was defeated last November in his own bid for Attorney General.

A federal court on Friday handed down an order that temporarily suspends a provision of an Indiana law that defunds abortionist organizations like Planned Parenthood. That’s the bad news.

The good news is the order also upheld a key provision that requires women to be informed that “human physical life begins when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm.”

Specifically, the order explained that “the language crafted by the legislature in this provision supports a finding that the mandated statement refers exclusively to a growing organism that is a member of the Homo sapiens species.”

His words struck a chord. Maria felt chills run up her spine when Franklin Graham talked about the temporal nature of the human body on this final night of the Festival de Esperanza.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association hosted the Festival de Esperanza, the first-ever American Hispanic festival, Saturday and Sunday at the Home Depot Center in Los Angeles.

“The body is made out of dust of the ground,” said Graham. “Your soul is the real you and it will never die. What should it profit a man to gain whole world but lose his soul?”

AP Photo

Kansas may not be completely free of abortion clinics, but the battle is raging for God’s will there.

A new Kansas abortion law will close one of the state’s three remaining abortion facilities and is likely to force a second to discontinue providing surgical abortions. The Aid for Women clinic in Kansas City was denied a license by the state health department last week.

However, Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri President Peter Brownlie are optimistic following a 20-hour inspection of the organization’s Overland Park location. “The findings of the inspection indicate we will be in full compliance with the abortion facility license regulations when they go into effect on July 1,” Brownlie told the Associated Press. “Thus, I believe we should be granted a license.”

AP Photo

Gay marriage may be legal in New York today, but the National Organization for Marriage isn’t ready to bless the homosexual unions. In fact, NOM President Brian Brown just promised to spend at least $2 million during the 2012 elections to make sure Republicans get this message loud and clear: Voting for gay marriage has consequences.

“The Republican party has torn up its contract with the voters who trusted them in order to facilitate Andrew Cuomo’s bid to be president of the U.S.” Brown says. “Selling out your principles to get elected is wrong. Selling out your principles to get the other guy elected is just plain dumb.”

The Church of God in Christ Bishop James Oglethorpe Patterson Jr. died on Saturday.

Patterson was born in Memphis, Tenn., on May 28, 1935, to the late President Bishop of the Church of God in Christ, Bishop J.O. Patterson, Sr. and Deborah M. Patterson. He was the grandson of the COGIC founder Bishop Charles Harrison Mason.

Known as both a churchman and a statesman, Patterson served as chairman of the General Assembly, the legislative body of the church for nearly 11 years. As chairman of the General Assembly, Patterson supervised all sessions of the legislative authority of COGIC.

“Bishop J.O. Patterson was a wise and faithful chairman who served in one of the highest offices of the Church of God in Christ,” says Presiding Bishop Charles E. Blake. “The General Assembly of the church is the doctrine-expressing body of the church, and Bishop Patterson led that entity effectively and with vision. He will be greatly missed. We offer our sincere prayers to his wife, family and the Pentecostal Temple congregation.”

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As celebrities, government officials and regular Joes and Janes alike celebrate the legalization of gay marriage in New York, Christian family organizations are offering some harsh words for the Republican-dominate New York Senate.

As Family Research Council President Tony Perkins sees it, enormous political coercion has resulted in a profound failure of moral courage in the New York Senate.

A clear majority of the people of New York oppose counterfeit ‘marriage,’ he notes, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo and anti-family lawmakers have shown that their allegiance is to a small but vocal minority seeking to redefine marriage and family.

AP Photo/David Duprey

An apology is just not good enough for the Family Research Council.

NBC apologized for removing the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance in a broadcast of the U.S. Open Golf Tournament on Sunday, but the FRC wants more.

The council is urging its members to send NBC a message, demanding that “the network … take corrective action to ensure that the public airwaves will not be used to censor our nation’s Pledge of Allegiance.”

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Dozens of gay couples are planning to converge on Albany, N.Y., Thursday to witness what would be a historic vote to legalize gay marriage in New York. But for that to happen, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s considerable political skills will be tested as never before to engineer one of the biggest social changes in a generation.

The Democrat has been using a kind of shuttle diplomacy to privately test proposals for additional religious exceptions within the Senate’s Republican majority. He’s talked to individual senators or small groups of lawmakers privately, breaking down barriers and letting them take his message to others in the Republican caucus.

The proposed protections are aimed at saving religious groups from discrimination lawsuits if they refuse to recognize gay marriage based on their principles.

The voice of prophetic doom is silenced, sort of.

Harold Camping, the 89-year-old Christian radio broadcaster who three times predicted the world would end—most recently on May 21—is putting an end to his weekday segment called Open Forum on Family Radio.

Camping suffered a stroke on June 9, and Family Radio has been playing reruns of earlier recorded episodes on the radio station he founded since then. Specifically, Camping’s staff aired 20 segments he recorded between May 23 and June 9, according to the Oakland Tribune.

Increased public statements against Christianity in Iran have intensified pressures on Christians, sources said, but at their core they reflect Islamic leaders’ dismay with the growth of house churches and may signal dissension within Iran’s leadership.

“The reality is most of the house churches are so hidden that the government can’t do anything, and they know it,” said a regional expert who requested anonymity. “They just see how the house churches are still growing.”

The source said that since mass arrests at the beginning of this year, Christians have been more cautious.

Members of the Congolese medical community joined church and mission leaders, relief workers and Congolese government officials in celebrating 50 years of Mission Aviation Fellowship service in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

MAF is a Christian ministry organization that uses airplanes and other technologies to serve church and relief organizations in remote areas of the world.

During a gathering at the International Protestant Church of Kinshasa last month, Dr. Tony Karemere of the Institut National de Recherche Biomedicale commended MAF’s commitment to sharing the gospel and providing access to medical care. Karemere emphasized MAF’s work to combat Ebola epidemics in 1995 and 2007, as well as the measles outbreak that threatened the DRC this spring.

AP Photo/Joel Page

Kansas could become the first abortion-free state in the nation.

According to the new state law, clinics offering abortions must meet minimum safety standards before they can be licensed. If clinics fail to meet the new standards, they cannot legally do abortions.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has the authority to deny, suspend or revoke a license, and has the authority to fine a clinic for violations and go into court to ask that a clinic be closed. The KDHE will notifiy the trio of clinics on July 1 as to whether or not they can continue killing unborn babies.

“We have doubts that any of the abortion clinics can meet the safety requirements of the new law,” says Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “If they cannot comply, all three abortion clinics would be forced to cease abortion operations, making Kansas the first abortion-free state in the nation.”

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