OMG! Atheist ads keep right on rollin’

Some are even reasonably good humored in their rebuttal of defacement.

So much unholy moly, so little time.

Alternatively … .

Are they serious?

Sharon Autenrieth at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch agrees the fundamental Manhattan Declaration points, yet sees the ovearching whacko of it. Charles Colson talks of educating young evangelicals about “the three most important issues,” and Autenrieth responds:

Really? The “three most important issues”? That’s a bold statement. And what are the issues that are drawing younger evangelicals attention, anyway? Much research shows that young evangelicals are pro-life in similar numbers to their elders. They seem to be more pro-life than senior citizens in the church, as a matter of fact. But get a group of young Christians talking about social issues and you are also likely to hear about climate change and justice issues – human trafficking, militarism, and especially global poverty. Let’s just focus on that last one for the moment. Are the signatories of the Manhattan Declaration confident that preventing civil society from recognizing same-sex marriage is a more central issue for Christians than addressing poverty? Are they serious? Let’s see…in the parable of the sheep and the goats Jesus separated the blessed from the cursed based on how they treated the hungry & thirsty, the sick, the stranger, the naked and the prisoner. If that’s not enough reason to prioritize serving those in need, consider that James 1:27 says that “Religion God your Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

Hate Studies

An interdisciplinary curriculum sparked by conversations at Gonzaga University.

It’s time.

Saturday night graph: It’s still the economy …

[H/T Nate Silver]

Real, live climatological scientists

Climategate is reassuring for everyone concerned that global warming and other scientific work is a conspiracy by extraterrestrials.

The pilfered 169-megabyte [.zip] file includes emails which show scientists at the University of East Anglia to be inescapably human. As they ever so tactfully put it at RealClimate:

…There is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.

‘Going Muslim’ down the slippery slope into the black box of religion

Jeremy Walton coments on Tunku Varadarajan’s Going Muslim column in Forbes. Walton explains how secular culture substitutes “the black box” of religion” for understanding:

When confronted by actions or motivations that defy explanation, the mouthpieces of secular political culture are content to attribute these actions or motivations to religion and then rush to criticize them as such. While so-called Islamist violence is a particularly frequent object of this type of black box rationality, one also encounters it in less spectacular contexts. Contemporary homophobia in the United States, for example, is typically linked to Evangelical Protestantism and Christianity more generally in public discourse, in spite of the fact that many devout Christians eschew bias based upon sexual orientation and many prominent homophobes have only marginal religious credentials. This is not to deny that some individuals do understand their own violent actions or prejudices as religiously-motivated. However, this fact does not imply that public commentators on religion should take this self-understanding at face value. This is especially the case in politically-charged times, when the attribution of individual causes too easily becomes a blanket description of entire communities and traditions.

Bishops defend the Catholic Camapign for Human Development

Archbishops John Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and Charles J. Chaput of Denver. responded to the far-right hammering of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), for which collections are being made this weekend.

Chaput, one of the investigators of the Legion of Christ, was reported by the Catholic News Agency to have said of blog attacks: “People shouldn’t believe everything they read or be upset with the kind of intensity that I’ve seen, because I think that intensity leads to blindness.”

According to CNS, Nienstedt explained that the Campaign aims to “break the cycle of poverty” for 40 million people in the U.S. by funding local “self-help, anti-poverty” organizations. Many of these are not under the auspices of the Church, but agree to follow guidelines which prevent them from violating Catholic teachings, the archbishop explained. And had “immediately cut off” violators.

Enough with the Psalms 109:8

Sick ? Maybe dangerous, and you can’t buy them from Psalms 109:8 designs from CafePress anymore.

Polite applause, y’all.

Permitting discrimination in the name of religious freedom?

Bad solution to the wrong problem. So argues Peterr at FireDogLake:

Archbishop, if the government offers grants to provide housing for low-income people that have strings attached that you disagree with, such as prohibiting discrimination against certain family arrangements, don’t apply for the grant. It’s that simple. No one is holding a gun to your head, saying “take this money or else.”

This isn’t about religious freedom — it’s about churches asking for special rights: the right to legally discriminate in workplace practices and the right to legally discriminate in the delivery of publicly funded social services.

What are we missing here?

Our dollars are great; your percentages are lousy

The Southern Baptist Convention‘s Great Commission Resurgence Task Force continues its pattern of answering questions with language that confuses and frustrates.

Ronnie Floyd, chairman of the task force, answered 12 questions after he spoke at the Illinois Baptist Pastors’ Conference, according to a report in Baptist Press.

Kevin Kerr, president of the Illinois Baptist State Association, asked the first question, according to the report. He wanted to know about the Cooperative Program commitment of churches represented on the task force which average less than 6 percent.

Floyd first deflected the question by saying that he didn’t appoint the task force, but was just asked to chair it. Then he repeated SBC president Johnny Hunt’s preferred answer to questions about CP commitment: “We don’t spend percentages, we spend dollars.”

Floyd then talked of how his church, First Baptist Church of Springdale, Ark., is increasing its gifts to the Cooperative Program 44 percent. That sounds good until you realize that the increase will still leave the church giving about 3 percent of its $14.8 million in undesignated offerings to CP.

Even more revealing is Floyd’s comment later about his belief that a lack of biblical stewardship is one of the underlying problems in the SBC.

“God tells individuals to tithe and honor Him with the first tenth and with offerings, but studies show the average evangelical gives 2.4 percent to all charities. How are we going to change the world with the Gospel when 98 cents of every dollar given stays in the churches and 98 cents of every dollar earned stays in the pocket of the member?”

So Floyd first asks Southern Baptists to ignore the low percentage his church gives to the Cooperative Program, then complains about the low percentage people give in general. Although we spect that the billions of dollars represented by the 2.4 percent evangelicals give to charities spends just like the money Floyd’s church sends to the SBC.

With reasoning like Floyd’s, one can expect the Great Commission desurgence to continue.