Charisma News

As an offensive lineman for the University of Missouri, Mark Hill knows a thing or two about getting physical.

On the Mizzou football field, he lives in the trenches.

But the redshirt freshman, who spent his elementary school years growing up in Joplin, Mo., could hardly imagine the physical labor that it would take to clean up and rebuild the city many of his family members still call home.

“It almost brought tears to my eyes as I was driving around, having to hold it back,” Hill said. “Road after road, just gone.”

As the turbulent ’60s concluded and a new decade began, Billy Graham appeared at a July 4 event in Washington, D.C., called “Honor America Day.”

More than 400,000 people attended, while millions watched on television or heard it on the radio in 123 other countries.

Bob Hope, Dinah Shore, Jack Benny, Glen Campbell, The New Christy Minstrels and Teresa Graves were among those who performed that day.

According to liner notes on the album, Honor America Day was denounced by the extreme right and the extreme left, but was supported by ordinary Americans, “rich and poor, black and white, Republicans and Democrats, Christians and Jews.”

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.”

AP Photo

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.