2008: McCain backs initiative barring gay marriage in California / Sacramento Bee

See the original of this article on the Sacramento Bee website at this link.

Thanks very much, Senator McCain. Almost all Latter-day Saints will applaud this action.

Steve St.Clair

====================

McCain backs initiative barring gay marriage in California
By Aurelio Rojas – arojas@sacbee.com

Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, June 28, 2008

GOP presidential candidate John McCain has endorsed the November ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage in California.

The endorsement, announced Thursday night on ProtectMarriage.com, the Web site of the Protect Marriage campaign, was not a surprise. The Arizona senator previously said he was happy Californians would be voting on the measure, which the secretary of state’s office designated Friday as Proposition 8.

“I support the efforts of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution between a man and a woman, just as we did in my home state of Arizona,” McCain said in a statement released by the Protect Marriage campaign. “I do not believe judges should be making these decisions.”

The California Supreme Court overturned the state’s ban on gay marriage in May. Massachusetts is the only other state to sanction them.

Protect Marriage campaign chairman Ron Prentice welcomed McCain’s endorsement and urged his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, to add his support.

“We hope that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama will join Sen. McCain in endorsing the initiative, and would welcome his support as well,” Prentice said in the statement.

McCain endorsed a 2006 Arizona initiative defining marriage as only between a man and a woman – which was defeated – but voted against a federal constitutional amendment against gay marriage.

Obama also opposes same-sex marriage but has said each state should make its own decision. The Illinois senator has not signaled interest in weighing in on the California measure.

Obama opposes a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and has said he’s interested in ensuring that same-sex couples in civil unions receive federal benefits.

Jeff Flint, a spokesman for the Protect Marriage campaign, predicted McCain’s endorsement would help build support for the marriage ban in California.

“Sen. McCain is universally respected, and his endorsement will certainly help,” Flint said.

But Steve Smith, a spokesman for the Equality For All Campaign, called McCain’s endorsement “inconsequential.”

“This is the kind of campaign where people will decide for themselves based on what they feel in their gut,” said Smith, whose group opposes a ban.

The Protect Marriage campaign has not asked McCain to campaign for the ban but will tout his support, Flint said.

Smith predicted McCain won’t spend much time in the state before the November election because Obama “is going to win California handily.”

Proposition 8 would amend the state constitution to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in the state.

In 2000, more than 61 percent of voters approved a statute declaring that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid in California.

Polls indicate the Nov. 4 vote will be much closer.

2006: Spreading the Word: Korean Evangelical Growth in Orange County

See the original of this article from the Orange County Register in January 2006 at this link.

Thanks much,
Steve St.Clair
======================
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Spreading the word
As north county’s Korean population swells, so are the number and size of churches catering to the community.
By ERIC CARPENTER
The Orange County Register

What began in 1984 as a living-room Bible study has steadily grown into the 700-member-strong Sam Sung Presbyterian Church on 10 acres in La Habra.

But that growth pales compared to the dreams the Rev. Wonkyu Stephen Shin has for the next decade.

He hopes to grow the church to 5,000 members and 2,000 missionaries, which would easily make it La Habra’s largest church.

That sounds ambitious. But if other Korean-American churches in north Orange County are an indication, Shin’s dream is attainable.

As the region’s Korean population continues to swell, north county has become home to some of the area’s largest Korean churches.

In Fullerton, Grace Ministries International holds Sunday services from some 2,500 members in a temporary sanctuary.

Grace has gained approval to build what will become Fullerton’s largest sanctuary.
And in Anaheim, Sa-Rang Community Church is bursting at the seams, boasting a membership of 11,000.

On Sundays, congregants park up to a mile away from the church and are shuttled in. The 900-stall parking lot just isn’t large enough to hold the cars during four services held throughout the day.

“We are all seeing growth and there is room for all of us to continue that growth,” said Shine Kim, business director at Grace Ministries.

“We are communicating and networking more. There’s never been a time like this.”

Church growth isn’t unique to the Korean community.

First Evangelical Free Church, Fullerton’s oldest mega-church, recently submitted plans to the city to add office space and build a parking structure to accommodate its growth.

But the rise of the Korean mega-church is a phenomenon that has caught some non-Koreans by surprise.

Church leaders attribute the church growth to several factors.

First, Korean immigrant families that had lived in Los Angeles’ Koreatown and surrounding communities are increasingly turning to Orange County for its suburban comforts – larger homes with more land – and for its reputation for fine schools.

As the Korean population spreads south and east from Los Angeles, Orange County churches provide a more central location for families from Cerritos, Norwalk, Chino Hills and Diamond Bar.

Also, second-generation Korean-Americans are looking to Korean-based churches for networking opportunities and as a way to grow spiritually while retaining their Korean culture, church leaders said.

Edward Cho, 28, said he had drifted from his roots. But now that he’s started a family – he is married with an 8-month-old daughter – he’s rediscovering church and his culture at Grace Ministries.

“There are people here that have had many of the same experiences as me,” said Cho, a finance consultant from Brea. “It’s helped me rediscover the Lord and set my priorities.

“I could go to an English-speaking church, but I feel more at home here.”

La Habra Councilman James Gomez, a business manager for Sam Sung Church, said Korean churches are becoming more involved with the larger community.

Sam Sung, for instance, is planning a community crusade at La Habra High School’s stadium in May.

Sam Sung leaders helped La Habra establish a sister city in Korea. Grace Ministries did the same in Fullerton. And both have led trips with local civic and business leaders to South Korea.

“It used to be that our church was like an island,” said the Rev. Solomon Kim, a pastor at Sam Sung. “But now our focus is reaching out to the community.

“And with that we will continue to grow.”

Sam Sung Presbyterian Church
Location: 951 S. Beach Blvd., La Habra
Moved to site: 2003
Membership: 700
Notable: “Sam Sung” in Korean means “trinity.” The church is located on a site that was originally a Lutheran church in the 1940s, before becoming a car dealership, then medical offices.

Grace Ministries International
Location: 1645 W. Valencia Drive, Fullerton
Moved to the site: 2002
Membership: 2,500
Notable: Grace established its church and world missionary headquarters on the former site of Hunt Wesson Foods, famous for its ketchup and cooking oil.

Sa-Rang Community Church
Location: 1111 Brookhurst St., Anaheim, CA 92801

Website (Korean):

Tel : 714-772-7777, Fax : 714-772-0777
Moved to the site: 1998
Membership: 11,000
Notable: Sa-Rang in Korean means “love.”

Contact the writer: (714) 704-3769 or ecarpenter@ocregister.com

2008: Mormons Make Their Voices Heard — Digitally / LDS Newsroom

See the original of this article on the LDS Newsroom website at this link.

Thanks much,
Steve St.Clair
=====================
Mormons Make Their Voices Heard — Digitally
SALT LAKE CITY 3 June 2008

In an age when the Internet has become a primary way that people communicate, three young Latter-day Saint women endeavor to discuss their faith. They don’t do it in their Sunday best sitting in a church house; they do it sitting in front of a Web cam with a high-speed connection.

“We wanted to create a space where people could come to discuss religion,” one said.

“The response [to the videos] has been great. People are talking. We wanted people to talk. You don’t have to agree with me, but just creating the space to talk has been beneficial.”

In an effort to create more “space for talking,” many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are making their voices heard digitally.

West Allen, a Church member from Las Vegas, organized an activity designed to allow young members of Mormon congregations near his home to share their beliefs on video, later to be posted online. Allen hopes the footage will have a positive impact on those that see it.

“In my mind, watching something on the Internet can be as effective as meeting face to face,” Allen said. “People can feel when something is genuine.”

Creating a forum to discuss religion is a growing phenomenon on the Internet. Like many issues before it, religion has become a topic of discussion for scholars and “YouTubers” alike.

According to a recent CNN report, approximately 79 million users watched over three billion videos on YouTube.com, a video sharing Web site, in January of 2008. In addition, as of early April 2008, there were more than 84 million videos available for viewing on the site.

Elder M. Russell Ballard, a senior leader in the Church, emphasized, in a recent speech given on the Brigham Young University-Hawaii campus, how important it is for members to join the ongoing online conversations concerning religion.

He has also noted that Church members should express their feelings and beliefs but that they of course should not present themselves as speaking officially for the Church.

In response to Elder Ballard’s remarks, many members of the Church are doing what they can to use the Internet as a tool to communicate with friends and strangers alike by creating blogs and posting materials on video sharing sites.

“My goal is to put the right information out there. I want to do what I can to dispel the misconceptions and misunderstanding concerning our faith,” says David Grow, an active YouTuber and member of the Church. “I have received hundreds of messages from Church members and those of other faiths saying they are glad I put up the videos.”

Those posting video emphasized the key roles accuracy and authenticity play when discussing religion online.

They say that though some may not agree with all aspects of your theology, if you check your facts and share with honesty and with dignified expressions of personal belief, most people will respect that. Further, they stress the necessity for a kind of “credible openness” that is expected online.

“Speak on what you know,” Las Vegas youth leader West Allen says. “Make it personal. They [members] should share how the Church or the gospel has personally benefitted them and their families.”

Many Mormons using video sharing sites are tapping into the resources available to them on the official Web pages of the Church, including the Church’s Newsroom Web site.

2008: Calif. court refuses to stay gay marriage ruling

See the original of this post on the Associated Press website at this link.

Thanks much,
Steve St.Clair

=================

Calif. court refuses to stay gay marriage ruling
By LISA LEFF – 20 hours ago
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)

California’s highest court Wednesday refused to stay its decision legalizing same-sex marriage in the state, clearing the final hurdle for gay couples to start tying the knot this month.

Conservative religious and legal groups had asked the California Supreme Court to stop its May 15 order requiring state and local officials to sanction same-sex unions from becoming effective until voters have the chance to consider the issue in November. The justices’ decisions typically become final after 30 days.

An initiative to ban gay marriage has qualified for the Nov. 4 ballot. Its passage would overrule the court’s decision by amending the state constitution to limit marriage to a man and a woman.
In arguing for a delay, the amendment’s sponsors predicted chaos if couples married in the next few months, only to have the practice halted at the ballot box.

The four justices who denied the stay request were the same judges who joined in the majority opinion that found withholding marriage from same-sex couples constituted discrimination. The three dissenting justices said they thought a hearing on whether the stay should be granted was warranted.

The majority did not elaborate on its reasons for denying the stay, but simply issued a one-page order saying its original ruling on marriage would be final at 5 p.m. on June 16.

Wednesday’s denial clears the way for gay couples in the nation’s most populous state to get married starting June 17, when state officials have said counties must start issuing new gender-neutral marriage licenses.

2008: Where Jim Wallis Stands / Christianity Today

With signers of the “Evangelical Manifesto” trying to show themselves as a third way in Protestantism between the problems of fundamentalism on one side and the disasters of mainline Protestant churches on the other, it is important to understand the signers of the document and what their positions are on issues important to Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints.

Jim Wallis is one of the signers, and he has positions on social issues that would give pause to almost all Evangelicals with which I have ever had any acquaintance. In fact, his positions on almost everything are nearly indistinguishable from the liberal mainline churches which are losing membership at an unprecented pace, because of those positions.

This post, is an interview with Christianity Today. The leaders of Christianity Today are of course one of the major promoters of the Evangelical Manifesto. So it is important to note that Christianity Today clearly does not support the radical positions of Jim Wallis, even though they both signed the Evangelical Manifesto. I would bet that almost all signers from other organizations hesitated when they knew he would sign, and that other leading Evangelicals who otherwise would have will not sign specifically because he has done so.

See the original of this interview on the Christianity Today website at this link.

Thanks much,
Steve St.Clair
==================

Where Jim Wallis Stands
The longtime activist on abortion, gay marriage, Iraq — and biblical orthodoxy
Interview by Ted Olsen
posted 4/16/2008 09:01AM
J
im Wallis wants you to know he’s not a liberal. Yes, he’s been a chief critic of the Religious Right since its inception, gave the Democratic weekly radio address after the 2006 midterm elections, and has been an often-controversial voice for social justice since his early-’70s days at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. But, he says, his chief critics these days are liberals, not conservatives.

“There is a Religious Left in this country, and I’m not a part of it,” Wallis said when he stopped by Christianity Today’s offices during his February tour for his latest book, The Great Awakening. Meanwhile, he says, theologically conservative evangelicals (especially young ones) are flocking to his message and are “deserting the Religious Right in droves” because it attempted to “restrict the language of ‘moral values’ to just two issues—abortion and gay marriage.”

“For years I have been called a progressive evangelical, but people said that was a misnomer,” says Wallis, who turns 60 in June. “The misnomer is becoming a movement.”

The Great Awakening is full of prescriptions on the broader social agenda: poverty, genocide in Darfur, global warming, the Iraq war, and other issues widely covered in Wallis’s Sojourners magazine and his previous books. But The Great Awakening contains public-policy positions Wallis promotes less often: abortion and gay marriage, those two pillars of the Religious Right.

He discussed these issues, and others, in further detail with CT’s editors.

Christianity Today: You repeatedly cite William Wilberforce as someone who did Christian political engagement right. But aren’t your views on abortion—”protecting unborn life in every possible way, but without criminalizing abortion”—fundamentally at odds with Wilberforce’s efforts to totally abolish slavery? He felt that “protecting slaves” without criminalizing slavery was unjust.

Jim Wallis: The abortion debate has really gotten very stale. It’s a symbolic legal battle that takes place mostly only in election years. And it’s a litmus test on the Left and the Right. No one seems to care about the abortion rate. The Republicans want a constitutional amendment banning abortion. That’s just symbolic. It’s never going to happen in America. And even if you do ban it, you’re still going to have a huge problem in the culture.

But the abortion question is real. It’s a moral issue. The number of unborn lives that are lost every year is alarming. It’s a moral tragedy. And I want Democrats to say it’s a tragedy, and to take it seriously. Whichever Democrat wins, Barack or Hillary, I’m going to work very hard to make abortion reduction a central Democratic Party plank in this election. It never has been before. Their plank is simply a woman’s right to choose. That’s not adequate. The Democratic Party is not going to call for criminalization, but they can call for serious abortion reduction. And I want Republicans to not have only a plank that they trod over every four years to win elections. I want them to try and actually help reduce the abortion rate.

After I spoke in Chicago, a father came and said, “I’m a father of a Down syndrome child. You know that test that everybody wants you to take to make sure you don’t have a Down syndrome child?”

I said, “Yeah. Joy and I were pressured by our doctor to take that test because we’re older parents and the chance of Down syndrome is greater. But we wouldn’t take it.” There was no reason to take it because we wouldn’t abort our child. But the pressure was really enormous, and we just finally said, “Hey, we’re not taking it. End of conversation.”

This father told me that because of that test, 90 percent of Down syndrome children are now aborted. Ninety percent. That’s genetic engineering, and that’s a culture issue. Just changing laws isn’t going to change that culture.

It should be more difficult to get an abortion. It’s too easy, and it’s even harder in secular western Europe than it is here. How do you make it more difficult, yet not push people back in the back alleys? That’s not pro-life. I don’t have it all figured out, and I want to seriously work on the question.

But a genuine pro-life agenda will be focused on the throwaway culture. The throwaway culture is why those Down syndrome kids are being thrown away. You can’t accept the throwaway culture in every other area like what we do to the environment, our consumption, and the rest, then somehow change on abortion.

Christianity Today: Still, for your entire career you’ve advocated a prophetic voice on social issues. Isn’t the prophetic voice usually associated with articulating the bottom line without compromising on pragmatic grounds like cultural opposition or secondary effects? Wilberforce’s Slavery Abolition Act created “back alley” slavery that made life much worse for slaves. But Wilberforce didn’t see that as an argument against abolition.

Jim Wallis: I don’t think that abortion is the moral equivalent issue to slavery that Wilberforce dealt with. I think that poverty is the new slavery. Poverty and global inequality are the fundamental moral issues of our time. That’s my judgment.

People make the mistake of defining prophetic by politically left and right categories, and that the further left or right you are, the more prophetic you are. They’re not biblically prophetic; they’re politically ideological. I think the prophetic stance right now in the pitched legal stalemate on abortion is abortion reduction. Instead of endless, meaningless debates about the law and constitutional amendments, let’s actually save some unborn lives. People can disagree with my stance, and say the constitutional amendment to ban abortion is the prophetic stance. I don’t believe it is.

On the issue of gay marriage, the prophetic stance, I think, is dialogue. It’s talking to each other.

Christianity Today: But you’re calling for more than just dialogue, right? In your book, you say the way to ensure civil rights for gay and lesbian people and equal protection under the law for same-sex couples is “civil unions from the state and even spiritual blessings for gay couples from congregations prepared to offer them.”

Jim Wallis: I believe in equal protection under the law in a democratic, pluralistic society. At Focus on the Family, I had this discussion with James Dobson’s policy people, and they basically support equal protection under the law, too. Some would debate whether civil unions are necessary for that, or whether other legal protections are adequate. And that’s a fair discussion.

I don’t think the sacrament of marriage should be changed. Some people say that Jesus didn’t talk about homosexuality, and that’s technically true. But marriage is all through the Bible, and it’s not gender-neutral.

I have never done a blessing for a same-sex couple. I’ve never been asked to do one. I’m not sure that I would. I want churches that disagree on this to have a biblical, theological conversation and to live with their differences and not spend 90 percent of their denominational time arguing about this issue when 30,000 children are dying every single day because of poverty and disease.

I don’t have all the answers on homosexuality. Fifty years from now, when we understand more what’s going on, we’ll look back and we’ll ask: How did we treat gay and lesbian people? Did they feel like we treated them the way Jesus might have? And how do we treat each other in this conversation? When this becomes the defining issue of our time, I get nervous.

Christianity Today: Are you concerned, though, that taking advertising in Sojourners magazine from Human Rights Campaign [a gay-rights group] makes it seem that it is a bigger issue for you?

Jim Wallis: Advertising is always a difficult question. I had real mixed feelings about those ads. We probably wouldn’t do it again, because when you take advertising it implies you might be sympathetic to the advertising. But we don’t take a position on this except promoting dialogue. At Sojourners, we’ve decided to have a safe place for dialogue and even disagreement on our staff and in our constituency.

Christianity Today: But blessing ceremonies for same-gender couples isn’t just dialogue. It’s a decisive action, and that can prompt other decisions. How do you counsel those who feel it’s a violation of their consciences to submit to a system they find unbiblical?

Jim Wallis: The Episcopal Church showed some typical American arrogance around the Robinson ordination when they weren’t willing to continue to be in conversation with their brothers and sisters in the Anglican Communion globally. But the church shouldn’t divide over this. They should stay together, live with their differences, keep talking, and respect each other’s opinions. There are churches that will bless gay unions, and that’s just a fact. They’re there. And there are churches that won’t. And those that won’t shouldn’t be pressured to do so by their liberal denominational leaders.

Christianity Today: But for many who won’t, it’s a gospel issue. It’s one of the markers of evangelicals in the mainline churches.

Jim Wallis: There are prudential judgments we all make, but there are principles that we should all affirm. And for too long there was a political orthodoxy that was quietly folded into theological orthodoxy that just wasn’t right.

[Former Sen.] Mark Hatfield and I were both banned from speaking at Wheaton College because we didn’t support the war in Vietnam. And now my archives are in Wheaton’s Billy Graham Library, so things have changed. Trinity tried to dismiss me from school, and actually said to me, “There’s no problem here with your theological orthodoxy, with your academic performance, with your social behavior. The problem is you cost the school a million dollars in lost contributions because of your political activism.” The good news was that half the student body and half the faculty rose up and said that’s not right, and the school backed off.

But there has never been a doubt that I am an evangelical. In fact, the Sojourners community had its fatal split many years ago when a number of people in the community, including some of my fellow elders, really wanted to change our theological orthodoxy and were attracted to people like Matthew Fox, the creation spirituality theologian. And I just said, “Matthew Fox is a heretic, and we’re committed to the central lordship of Jesus Christ and the authority of the Scriptures.”

And they said, “Well, we’re not. Not all of us.”

I said, “Well, Sojourners is. Even if you’re not, Sojourners is and it’s going to remain that way.” I was accused of hierarchy and patriarchy, they quit, and we split. And that was the end of the residential community in some ways. But I took a stand, as I always did, for orthodoxy.

There is a conversation in our place that is ongoing about how evangelical or ecumenical we are, and not all of our folks are as evangelical as I am. But I’m the founder and president still. I’m not dead yet. I went to Trinity because I wanted to have this discussion in the evangelical world. And then for a long time evangelicals weren’t really responding to us at Sojourners. Now they are.

Christianity Today: What’s the change you see? Many observers think it’s that a new generation of evangelicals are interested in poverty or other social ills. But that’s not new. Churches have a long history of assisting the poor (though they could have done more). What strikes me as new is that evangelical Christians are coupling what they do on the local, person-to-person level with a public-policy initiative.

Jim Wallis: Right. I recently met with Willow Creek’s social justice team. It wasn’t the social service team. They knew the difference. The God of the Bible is not just a God of charity. The God of the Bible is a God of justice, and they understood that.

Christianity Today: You have been one of the most outspoken evangelical critics of the Iraq war. Has the surge changed your opinion?

Jim Wallis: I haven’t changed my view at all. The war in Iraq was not a just war. It didn’t conform to the standards at all. And that’s the view of the vast majority of evangelicals around the world. I think it was the worst mistake in American foreign-policy history, with the exception of Vietnam.

Did the surge make security gains? Yes. Is that a lasting solution? No. There’s still very little movement on the political front. Is the surge working to reduce the violence? Yes. Does that mean the war in Iraq was a good idea after all? No. But I’m not calling for immediate withdrawal. Now that we’ve gone in there and made such a mess of it, there has to be a responsible transition, saving and protecting as many lives as possible, and an internationalizing of the security problem.

Christianity Today: When the surge was announced in January 2007, you called it criminal. In November, you called for war crimes investigations against Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld after the election. Do you still want them?

Jim Wallis: Whether investigations are the best thing after it’s done, I’m not sure. We need to learn what happened this time so it never happens again. If a Democrat wins in November, will I be standing in line with my first demand of the new administration to put Cheney in front of a Senate panel? I doubt it. I just want him to go back to Wyoming. And I have many other things to say before that, like putting poverty on the agenda. But there are days when I get so angry about the loss of life and the deception that I want Cheney to pay, I suppose. But my better, more Christian self would probably just want to move forward.
————————-
Collin Hansen reviewed Wallis’s most recent book, The Great Awakening in Christianity Today.
John Wilson profiled Jim Wallis in 1999 in Christianity Today.

2008: Gay marriage ban qualifies for California ballot / Associated Press

Joseph Bentley reminds us that from a legal perspective, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has still not decided whether will officially work for this constitutional amendment.

See the original of this article, published on June 2, 2008, on the MSNBC News website at this link.

Love & Thanks,

Steve St.Clair
===================

Gay marriage ban qualifies for California ballot
If approved by voters, initiative would overturn recent court ruling

The measure would amend the state constitution to “provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

If approved by a majority of voters on Nov. 4, the amendment would overturn the recent California Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in the state. It is similar to gay marriage bans that have been adopted in 26 other states.

“This signifies the fact that California voters really do favor and will come out to vote for the protection of historic marriage,” said Ron Prentice, executive director of ProtectMarriage.com, a coalition of religious and social conservative groups behind the initiative.

In response to the court’s May 15 ruling, California public health officials already have amended marriage license applications to read “Party A” and “Party B” instead of bride and groom. Local officials have been told to start issuing the revised licenses to same-sex couples on June 17.

Gay men and lesbians would still be able to get married between then and the election, even with the initiative pending, unless the court agrees to stay its decision until after Nov. 4, as the amendment’s sponsors have requested.

If the marriages proceed during the next five months, it is unclear whether they would be nullified if the amendment passes. Some legal scholars have said the state Supreme Court might get called on again to settle that question.

2005: Intelligent design: Not Just a Matter of Faith / Jeff Lindsay, Mormanity

See the original of this very favorable post on the intelligent design movement by LDS thinker Jeff Lindsay on May 3, 2005.

See the original at his Mormanity blog at this link.

Thanks,
Steve St.Clair

===============
Intelligent Design: Not Just a Matter of Faith
On February 7, 2005, the New York Times ran an op-ed piece, “Design for Living” by Michael J. Behe (also available at Discovery.org and other unusual sites. The author makes the point that the concept of intelligent design has been widely misrepresented and does not depend on religious faith. Michael Behe is a biochemist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, a Seattle-based organization that supports the intelligent-design movement. Here is an excerpt from his article:

Rather, the contemporary argument for intelligent design is based on physical evidence and a straightforward application of logic. The argument for it consists of four linked claims.

The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature. For example, unintelligent physical forces like plate tectonics and erosion seem quite sufficient to account for the origin of the Rocky Mountains. Yet they are not enough to explain Mount Rushmore. Of course, we know who is responsible for Mount Rushmore, but even someone who had never heard of the monument could recognize it as designed. Which leads to the second claim of the intelligent design argument: the physical marks of design are visible in aspects of biology. This is uncontroversial, too. . . .The next claim in the argument for design is that we have no good explanation for the foundation of life that doesn’t involve intelligence. Here is where thoughtful people part company.

Darwinists assert that their theory can explain the appearance of design in life as the
result of random mutation and natural selection acting over immense stretches of time. Some scientists, however, think the Darwinists’ confidence is unjustified. They note that although natural selection can explain some aspects of biology, there are no research studies indicating that Darwinian processes can make molecular machines of the complexity we find in the cell.

Scientists skeptical of Darwinian claims include many who have no truck with ideas of
intelligent design, like those who advocate an idea called complexity theory, which envisions life self-organizing in roughly the same way that a hurricane does, and ones who think organisms in some sense can design themselves.

The fourth claim in the design argument is also controversial: in the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life. . . .

Interesting comments.

Personally, I find the intricacies of life and the universe to be so clever and even inspiring that it is difficult to escape the natural testimony of a design. Yes, there is a Designer – and He’s awfully good at what He does.

2007: Whatever Happened to Christian Canada? (Review) / Richard John Neuhaus

This is a review of the presidential address of Evangelical scholar Mark Noll, professor of church history at Notre Dame University. It is by Richard John Neuhaus of First Things magazine.

See the original of this review, published in First Things in March 2007, on the First Things website at this link.

Thanks much,

Steve St.Clair
===================

Europe to the North of Us
“Whatever happened to Christian Canada?”

I expect many readers have never given a thought to the question. In part, because many, if not most, readers seldom give a thought to Canada. It is said that the difference between Canadians and Americans is that Americans do not think about the difference between Canadians and Americans. Many other such snide observations to which I take umbrage are made about the land of my birth. Truth to tell, I am not greatly offended. But, even if we did not have so many Canadian subscribers, attention must be paid. Not least because Canada is a fascinating study in the dynamics of religion and public life in which all of us, however variously, are involved.

“Whatever Happened to Christian Canada?” is Mark Noll’s presidential address to the American Society of Church History and is published in the society’s journal, which is, unsurprisingly, named Church History. Noll observes that the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the gift of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, states in the preamble: “Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.” Many Canadians now date the history of Canada from 1982. So much for Champlain, Wolfe, Montcalm, the Plains of Abraham, and the Battle of Vimy Ridge in the Great War. And Canada was by 1982 a different country and rapidly becoming more different still. Despite the words in the charter’s preamble, says Noll, “Canadian legislation and jurisprudence have increasingly privileged principles of privacy, multiculturalism, enforced toleration, and public religious neutrality, even when such moves de-christianize public space in which religious language was once commonplace.” It is true to say that, in most aspects of public life, Christianity has been not only disestablished but also banished.

Some startling statistics are to the point. In 1961, one half of one percent of Canadians were religiously unaffiliated; in 2001, 16.2 percent so described themselves. In the same four decades, those identifying with the Catholic Church declined from 46 to 43 percent, while identification with the four largest Protestant denominations (Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian, United Church of Canada) fell from 41 to 20 percent. “In 1950, Canadian church attendance as a proportion of the total population exceeded church attendance in the U.S. by one-third to one-half, and church attendance in Quebec may have been the highest in the world. Today church attendance in the U.S. is probably one-half to two-thirds greater than in Canada, and attendance in Quebec is the lowest of any state or province in North America.”

Noll writes: “The parallel histories of Quebec and the rest of Canada-though never without hypocrisy, patriarchialism, power mongering, partisan conflict, pettimindedness, heavy-handed coercion, interdenominational strife, and the masquerading of self-interest as piety-nonetheless left Canada at the mid-twentieth century with a much stronger claim as a ‘Christian nation’ than its large neighbor to the south. At least, that is, until the generation after the Second World War, when things began to change, and to change in a hurry.”

In his 1990 comparison of the U.S. and Canada, Continental Divide, the late Seymour Martin Lipset observed that Canada “has been and is a more class-aware, elitist, law-abiding, statist, collectivity-oriented, group-oriented society than the United States.” (Upon Lipset’s recent death, an obituary said that he wrote so well he could even interest his American readers in Canada.) Canadians tend to do things and to change together. In part, no doubt, because Canada is a relatively small society keenly aware of the behemoth to the South. Until fairly recently, it was in fact two societies, each with its cultural and religious establishment: Protestantism in English Canada and Catholicism in French Quebec. Taken all in all, Canada was more conservative. After all, they rejected the American Revolution, despite forceful American efforts to include them in the enterprise. In 1867, when Canada became a dominion within the British Empire, the motto was “peace, order, and good government.” Distinctly different, one might note, from America’s more adventurous “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

A Web of Contingencies
When I was a boy, Maurice Duplessis was the master of Quebec. As premier, he was le Chef who brokered the interests of the English-speaking business class and the Catholic hierarchy in maintaining the all-encompassing dominance of his party, Union Nationale. “In retrospect,” says Noll, “the Duplessis regime must be considered a bottle stop under which great pressure built up to modernize Quebec’s economic, political, religious, and cultural strife. The regime achieved stasis, but only by avoiding the province’s intensifying push for systematic modernization.”

I’m somewhat skeptical about that. There was not all that much “strife” in Quebec at the time. And I’m strongly skeptical about the idea of a systematic connection between modernization and secularization. Noll is on firmer ground, and is marvelously instructive, when he attends to the “web of contingency” that effected such great changes in Canada. One can readily imagine other contingencies with other outcomes. It might have been different.

One can imagine, for instance, Trudeau never having become prime minister. In 1969, his Liberal government engineered a declaration making all of Canada officially bilingual. Ethnic, religious, and other social particularities were being set aside in favor of a universalistic vision of multicultural toleration and of toleration as a mandated celebration of diversity. Canadian historian Reginald Bibby sees 1969 as a key turn from the traditional Christian identities of both French and English Canada toward an ideology of pluralism. “Since the 1960s,” Bibby writes, “Canada has been encouraging the freedom of groups and individuals without simultaneously laying down cultural expectations. Colorful collages of mosaics have been forming throughout Canadian life. Our expectation has been that fragments of the mosaic will somehow add up to a healthy and cohesive society. It is not at all clear why we should expect such an outcome.”

That is delicately put. In its determined effort to distinguish itself from the U.S., Canada has in some ways become more like the U.S. For instance, the 1982 charter has pushed Canadian jurisprudence into the American pattern of activist judges becoming the agents of social change. On the usual hot-button issues (e.g., abortion, same-sex marriage), the national and provincial parliaments have become junior partners as the judicial usurpation of politics proceeds apace.

It is a long and intriguing story that Mark Noll tells. In Quebec, for instance, it is understandable that reformers in the Church bristled under the stifling regime of Duplessis, in which the bishops “had traded their religious birthright for a pottage of corrupt political patronage.” Well before the Second Vatican Council, reformers in Catholic Action and other groups pressed for a radical break-not only in church teaching and practice but also in family and social life-from what had been monolithically “Catholic Quebec.” They were successful, says Noll, “in convincing Quebec of the need for a rupture with older forms of Catholicism, but they were not successful in getting the citizens of Quebec to embrace their version of a reformed, modern Catholicism. Rather, most Quebec citizens, when they gave up the older form of Catholicism, turned to the a- or anti-Catholic forms of nationalism, state rule, and linguistic sovereignty promoted by more secular or even radical forces.”

Historian Preston Jones puts it this way: “French Canadian nationalism as a cultural disposition rooted in Quebec’s Catholic history was transformed into Quebecois separatism as a secular faith founded upon an aspiration for political salvation from the influences of the English.” In the words of Noll, the new and reformed Catholicism “captured, but could not feed, the soul of Quebec.” In the rural and northern parishes of Quebec where I serve a few weeks of the summer, Catholic commitment is relatively strong, but it is not, as the old-timers routinely volunteer, anything like what it used to be. In Montreal it is not unusual that Sunday Mass in churches built for thousands is attended by two dozen of the faithful who seem lost in an ecclesiastical cosmos that, according to some observers, is on a trajectory toward oblivion.

As for the United Church of Canada, which resulted from a 1920s merger of Methodists and most Presbyterians, it still thought of itself as key to the religio-cultural establishment of English-speaking Canada. Its leadership is decidedly on the modernist side of the usual theological divides and was once confident that the UCC had an important part to play in helping the government create a new and more just society. Noll writes: “The irony of the situation was that while a modernistic social gospel succeeded in winning the mind of the United Church, that victory left the United Church with little to offer by way of specific Christian content in the radically transformed conditions of the 1960s, when Canadian governments acted far more effectively than the churches in guaranteeing personal welfare.” The Anglicans, who were once the Canadian elite, or much of the elite, at prayer have also fallen on hard times: “Efforts by Anglicans to preserve a measure of social influence have been set back by extensive court battles arising from earlier abuses of First Nation’s children in residential schools and by corrosive internal debates on matters of sexuality and doctrine. The struggle to define a meaningful Anglican presence for a denomination now marked by wide doctrinal pluralism leaves little energy for the magisterial guidance the denomination once provided for at least some ranks of Canadian society.”

There is an Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, but as Noll observes: “The relatively small size and modest means of the sectarian cohort in Canada, compared to the much larger and much wealthier cohort in the United States, constitute a major difference. But so does the fact that voluntaristic sectarians flourish in the United States at least in part because their loose, traditionless, entrepreneurial style fits well with the United States’ historically looser, less traditional, more republican, and more entrepreneurial culture, whereas north of the border no form of sectarianism or voluntarism has ever exerted a major public influence in Canada’s more corporate, conformist, cooperative, and monarchical culture.”

Secularism Alongside and Within
Toward the end of his survey, Noll says that Lipset’s point about Canada being a more communal and traditional society than the U.S. still holds. It is simply that the specifically Christian substance of that tradition has been largely evacuated. “In the United States, secularization has proceeded alongside of the fragmented, populist structures of American churches. In Canada, by contrast, it has worked through the communal, top-down structures of traditional Canadian society.” That is, I believe, an incisive observation, and helps explain, as Noll writes, “how Canada, which for so long looked much more Christian than Western Europe, and considerably more Christian than its southern neighbor, now appears in its religious character to resemble Europe much more closely than it does the United States.”

More recently, the Conservative party under the leadership of Stephen Harper has been able to form a minority government and is enjoying widespread support. Harper gives indications, however subtle, of greater sympathy for Canada’s earlier Christian tradition and its importance in addressing social issues of moral moment. It’s an apparently small thing, but much note is taken of his ending public speeches with “God bless Canada.” Also more recently, there are signs that some evangelicals and Catholics are overcoming their typically Canadian reticence-and their fear of seeming to be like those Americans-and are asserting a stronger public voice. It is possible that these are political and religious portents of major change. Many things are possible. But, for a lucid and persuasive explanation of recent decades, I recommend Mark Noll’s “What Happened to Christian Canada?”

Oh yes, another hopeful note on the Canadian scene. Archbishop Thomas Collins of Edmonton has just been installed as the new archbishop of Toronto. A Toronto paper ran an interview in which he was asked about his favorite movie, television show, food, football team, etc., etc. He said he didn’t pay enough attention to such things to have favorites. Then he was asked what is his favorite magazine, to which he responded: “I don’t really get magazines and if I do, they relate to my religious life. The one I subscribe to is First Things.” Sounds like a good man.

2008: A new beginning: Blacks giving the Mormon Church a second look / Columbia News Service

See the original for this article in the North County Times at this link.

Thanks much,
Steve St.Clair
==============
A new beginning: Blacks giving the Mormon Church a second look
By JOHN DORMAN – Columbia News Service
Angela Carson used to jump up and frequently yell “Hallelujah!” in church. Now, she sits in the middle pew and sings quietly, with a softer, gentler demeanor.

Carson, a 28-year-old black woman, left her Baptist church in New York last year feeling uninspired and removed from the congregation. She visited many traditional black churches, but she found her new home with the Harlem branch of the Mormon church.The religious pillars of service and community outreach appealed to Carson, but so did something that may surprise many blacks: the commitment to diversity she saw at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“I was approached by two younger African-American Mormon missionaries, and it made me think about the church in a different way,” she said. “So many people have asked me why I joined a racist religion, which makes me sad that people would think this faith teaches hate.”

Carson and other blacks who have left churches long associated with their communities, such as the Baptist and the African Methodist Episcopal congregations, say they often find cultural resistance from their families and friends who may be skeptical of how the Mormon church can minister to a black American.

“I remember my dad telling me that if I joined the church, I would have a hard time finding an African-American husband,” Carson said. “I thought about marriage prospects, but I date men from all persuasions, so it wasn’t an issue.”

There are roughly 13 million Mormons worldwide, and about half of those live in the United States, according to figures frequently cited by the church, which doesn’t record members’ racial or ethnic background.

However, about 3 percent of the Mormon Church in America is black, and less than 0.5 percent of black Americans are Mormon, according to a survey in 2007 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Policy. That would translate to slightly less than 200,000 black Mormons in America —- a huge increase from the 5,000 to 10,000 estimated by many experts at the turn of the century.

The growth of Mormonism among blacks is commonly tied to two events.

In 1978, the church abolished a long-standing practice that kept black men from seeking priesthoods and black women from participating in temple ceremonies. In 2006, Mormon president Gordon B. Hinckley publicly declared the faith open to all people.

“I am told that racial slurs and denigrating remarks are sometimes heard among us,” he said. “I remind you that no man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ.”

The Harlem church opened in 2005, about the same time as new Mormon facilities designed to attract more blacks and Latinos opened in Philadelphia, Detroit and San Antonio.

Congregations in these cities are often very racially mixed.

The church that Carson attends is part of a New York regional stake, the equivalent of a diocese, which is one of the more diverse stakes in the Church.

When she walked into the church for the first time, thoughts of any racial bias were forgotten.

“White and black people sat down with their families, extended their hands in worship, and sang alongside each other without any issues,” she said. “My faith and belief in diversity keeps me coming back here every week, no matter who resents it.”

Chris Carter, a 22-year-old black in Florida, is not affiliated with any congregation after leaving his Baptist church. He went to a Mormon service and said that he felt like more of an individual, despite the church’s reputation for homogeneity.

“My old church had this monolithic philosophy to it,” Carter said. “I just grew out of feeling like everyone was supposed to think the same, when I have always been my own individual.”

Ahmad Corbitt, the stake president of Mormon churches in southern New Jersey, is black. The congregations he oversees are predominantly white, and he said there is a lot the church can do to reach out to other blacks. He converted in 1980 and has nine other siblings, all of whom also became members of the Mormon church.

“The church decries racism and teaches equality among all citizens, and the average African-American member in our church wants to be here and feels a bond to what the church stands for,” he said.

Corbitt also is the northeast public and international affairs director of the church, and said that potential members have a right to examine the religion.

“I believe the church will actually be known as a model of diversity for the ability to bring people together, especially people of color, around Jesus Christ,” he said.

Church outreach efforts to blacks include a strong emphasis on missionary service and volunteer work in immediate neighborhoods. The church has a Family Home Evening once a week where families discuss Scripture and religious issues affecting their lives, often with the aid of books, videotapes and other audiovisual tools.

Carson grew apart from her former church partly because she felt they weren’t discussing real concerns that affected her fellow congregants. She has not started a family yet, but feels like the Mormon church places a strong emphasis on family bonds, which she thinks might appeal to other black Americans.

“There are issues with fatherless homes, broken schools, and poverty affecting so many African-Americans, and spending time with family could really make a difference for so many children,” she said.