Who’s Foxy Loxy in this story?

The sky isn’t falling but you might want to keep a close eye on the wall of separation between church and state.

When news broke about a proposed Christian prison in Oklahoma, the leading proponent told the Tulsa World, “If Chicken Little doesn’t come to town, we’ll be open in 16 months.”

Bill Robinson, the founder of Corrections Concepts Inc., was referencing the childhood fable where a chicken that gets hit on the head with an acorn causes something of a panic by claiming that the sky is falling.

In this case, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which issued a warning about the prison, knows the difference between a nut and the atmosphere.

Christian Right call for civil disobedience [Update]

Some 150 Christian leaders, mostly Religious Right protestants and conservative Roman Catholics, issued today a 4,700-word restatement of their opposition to abortion and gay marriage and support for religious freedoms and call for civil disobedience. They call their statement the Manhattan Declaration.

The group concludes with a reference to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and calling for civil disobedience in response to their causes:

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

Just as this morning’s sunrise is unique to today, it is an “unprecedented coalition,” as the Catholic News Agency asserts. CNS also says:

The Manhattan Declaration is the result of several months of dialogue among Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christian leaders culminating in a gathering of approximately 100 leaders in New York City on September 28, 2009.

Attendees considered an early draft of the “Manhattan Declaration, A Call of Christian Conscience,” but the document was entrusted to a drafting committee that included Dr. Timothy George of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, Dr. Robert P. George of Princeton University, and renowned Evangelical leader Charles Colson.

The signatories explained that they speak now because in order “to defend principles of justice and the common good that are now under assault.”

Anyone who has closely followed the political battles over health care, gay marriage and abortion will recognize the themes and arguments of the document, all reflected in the associated Web site.

Signatories predictably include 15 Roman Catholic bishops, among them New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan and Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl; Focus on the Family founder James Dobson; National Association of Evangelicals president Leith Anderson; Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Richard Land, president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; various other seminary leaders, professors and pastors.

More about this Manhattan Declaration later.

Update

With hyperventilating certainty about the future Chuck Colson declares the Manhattan Declaration “one of the most important documents produced by the American church, at least in my lifetime.”

Scientology Australia accused of torture/forced abortions

Unhappy Scientology: Last month a French court convicted the Church of Scientology of fraud and fined it almost a million dollars. This week the Australian government is responding to the complaints of former members Down Under.

Australian Senator Nick Xenophon used parliamentary privilege to raise allegations of criminal misconduct and called of an examination of the Church of Scientology’s right to tax-exempt status, reported news.com.au.

BBC reported:

The Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has said he will consider calls for a parliamentary inquiry into the Church of Scientology.

Church of Scientology Australia president Reverend Vicki Dunstan responded:

The alleged incidents voiced in the Senate on Tuesday came from disgruntled former members with their own agendas to put forward and were used by Senator Xenophon for “his own political aspirations.”

Reports of and inquiries into serious incidents associated with the church date at least to 1965. Charges of coerced abortions lodged by former members are not isolated to Australia.

Events in Australia have taken on new urgency in part as a result of the efforts of anonymous (anonaustralia}, whose February protests there attracted wide attention there and online.

With pressure rising Down Under, the Australians are likely to go French on this and impose sanctions.

Anglican leader pushes back at the pope

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams fired back Nov. 19, telling a conference in Rome that the Roman Catholic Church’s refusal to ordain women was a barrier to Christian unity.

Speaking at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University prior to his Saturday meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, Williams said, drawing a sharp contrast, “For many Anglicans, not ordaining women has a possible unwelcome implication about the difference between baptised men and baptised women.”

He went on to say that Anglican provinces that ordain women had retained rather than lost their Catholic holiness and sacramentalism.

Thus, he thoroughly defied one of the animating tensions which led Pope Benedict XVI to offer disaffected Anglicans a “Church within a Church” that would enable them to retain traditional Anglican practices within the Catholic faith.

Williams not only repudiated the notion that he might lead a reversal of direction in the Anglican ordination of women, he also described the pope’s historic offer as little more than an “imaginative pastoral response” which contributed little to ecumenical relations between the two churches.

Along the same lines, he also said:

It does not build in any formal recognition of existing ministries or methods of independent decision-making, but remains at the level of spiritual and liturgical culture.

As such, it is an imaginative pastoral response to the needs of some; but it does not break any fresh ecclesiological ground.

Not a model of ecumenism, indeed. The archbishop’s rose-colored glasses have been removed.

Gone

Spiritual Samurai. Perhaps you remember that blog from Valleygate and the lawsuit: RIP

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Church planting: Waste or salvation?

Church planting has become a main branch of the Southern Baptist Convention evangelism strategy, but a North Carolina pastor who ran for SBC president last year has raised serious questions about whether it should be.

Les Puryear, pastor of Lewisville Baptist Church, using statistics compiled by the SBC’s North American Mission Board, says that the convention spends about $100,000 over the first four years of a “planted” church’s life, yet 32 percent of new churches don’t survive for four years.

As a result:

If $1 million is invested to plant 10 new churches, $320,000 of that investment will not result in a viable, healthy church.

Without citing a source Using statistics from from the SBC Annual 2008 Book of Reports (p. 123), Puryear cities an NAMB church planting budget for 2008-2009 of about $22.85 million (a graphic on this page of the NAMB web site shows the 2008 budgeted expenses for church planting to be $24.4 million). Puryear calculated that about $7.31 million is being spent on churches that won’t exist after four years.

The new churches that survive for four years average 85 in attendance and have baptized 48 people.

Puryear compares that to his first four years at Lewisville, when 51 people were baptized.

“Thus, my 127-year-old ‘traditional’ Southern Baptist church has a higher average baptisms per year than does the average new church plant. I provide these stats not to glorify my church but to demonstrate that established, traditional Southern Baptist churches can be viable places of reaching the lost.”

SBC records show that in 2008, the convention’s 44,848 churches (newly ‘planted,’ dying, thriving, etc …) baptized 342,198 people, an average of 7.63 per church.

Ed Stetzer, who is now president of LifeWay Research, cited similar figures in a 2003 article called “The Most Effective Evangelistic Strategy Under Heaven.” The article, which was adapted from Stetzer’s book, “Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age,” quotes noted church growth author C. Peter Wagner as calling church planting “the single most effective evangelistic methodology under heaven.”

Stetzer goes on to cite research that new churches average about 14.4 baptisms per year for every 100 people in regular attendance in worship while churches that are 16 years old or more baptize about 7.3 persons per year for every 100 people in attendance. He calls new churches “a gift of evangelism.”

“Without church planting, our denomination will decline; but more importantly, the number of Christians in North America will continue to decline. If we love God’s Kingdom, we must love church planting.”

Church planting has been emphasized in the SBC since well before Stetzer’s article. Although the strategy has on occasion been problematic.

The Overseas Leadership Team for the SBC’s International Mission Board adopted a vision statement in 1998 to guide the IMB’s missionary force.

“We will facilitate the lost coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ by beginning and nurturing Church Planting Movements among all peoples.”

The IMB defines a church planting movement as “a rapid and multiplicative increase of indigenous churches planting churches within a given people group or population segment.”

By 2000, the IMB was discouraging volunteers from constructing church buildings overseas and instead moving them toward church planting efforts.

The IMB claims that its missionaries were responsible for more than 25,000 church starts in 2007, but the board’s numbers are thought to be inflated and in some cases fabricated.

The SBC’s North American Mission Board see its role as helping Southern Baptists fulfill the Great Commission “through a North American strategy for sharing Christ, starting churches and sending missionaries.”

NAMB even has a web site it calls a “one-stop shop for church planting.”

The SBC’s seminaries emphasize church planting. The Nehemiah Project, which put a professor of church planting on each Southern Baptist seminary campus, started in 1998, according to this time line.

Members of the convention’s Great Commission Task Force, which is studying ways the SBC can better accomplish the Great Commission, have talked about the importance of church planting. Danny Akin, the president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and a driving force behind the task force, has called for a church planting strategy “that assaults the major population centers of North America.”

“Why we plant more churches in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee than we do in New York, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Washington and California is absolutely incomprehensible to me.”

The Great Commission Resurgence Declaration calls for “new churches in unevangelized areas of North America, especially the great urban centers,” and for the revitalization of existing congregations.

“We long to see a Convention where every church is a church planting church in its unique Jerusalem, its Judea and Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth.”

Ronnie Floyd, chairman of the task force, said at a recent question and answer session that the group’s report “will ring the bell for church planting.”

I believe charging out of the gate of our report will be a real commitment to Gospel churches planting Gospel churches planting Gospel churches.

In his blog post, Puryear says he is “not anti-church planting.”

“And so, is church planting the best way to reach the lost? I’m not certain that church planting is the ‘best’ way, but it is one effective, though expensive way.”

In addition to church planting, Puryear said he’d like to see NAMB emphasize helping existing churches.

“Pursuant to such a goal, I would like to see NAMB establish seminars, conferences, study courses, etc., to help the local church learn how to develop strategies for reaching the lost. I hear many missionaries talking about outreach strategy, but I never see anyone teaching pastors and leaders of the local churches how to develop outreach strategies. If NAMB or someone else would develop such training, I would be the first in line to attend. Also, I would happily pay for such training. We train missionaries how to develop strategy. Why cannot we train our pastors?”

Thursday Religious (New Lutheran denomination, Ted startup launch, free ‘Origin,’ Atheist billboard uproar …)

• Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Renewal) organizing a new denomination (maybe): According to the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Journal Sentinel, “a national Lutheran group angered by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s August vote to allow gay clergy said Wednesday that it is developing a proposal for a new denomination for congregations and individuals interested in leaving the ELCA.”
  

  CORE members voted to begin discussing with congregations whether to move toward schism or work from within the church. It will vote on the breakaway proposal at its convocation Aug. 26-27 in Columbus, Ohio. Lutheran CORE would remain a free-standing synod serving congregations inside and outside the ELCA under a separate recommendation also being drafted, the organization said. Wisconsin CORE members will meet Nov. 28 in Lebanon (WI.).

  Shifting public attitudes may have some impact, we suspect.

• Ted Haggard startup successfully launched: Having had 150 people show up rather than the 10 or 20 he said he expected, Haggard “will continue to host prayer meetings every Thursday night in his home” and/or his barn Yes, as we predicted, “He’s back.”
• ‘Origin of Species’ giveaway: The Pittsburg Post-Gazette reports that at 100 campuses nationwide the 150th anniversary “Origin of the Species” came with addendum:
  

  The books included a 50-page introductory section by religious author Ray Comfort that argues against evolution. In total, Mr. Comfort — who hosts “The Way of the Master” television show with actor Kirk Cameron — gave away 170,000 copies of the books at universities.

• Northern Irish uproar over atheist billboard: The Belfast Telegraph writes:
  

  The British Humanist Association (BHA) yesterday unveiled a billboard with the slogan “Please Don’t Label Me. Let Me Grow Up And Choose For Myself” on one Belfast’s busiest routes.
  . . .
  However, religious leaders across Northern Ireland have hit out at the BHA, accusing the organisation of arrogance and hypocrisy.

  BBC reports that it’s part of a broad campaign:
  

  The posters are part of a campaign to challenge state-funded faith schools. … Professor Richard Dawkins, who has part-funded the BHA campaign in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, says labeling children as “religious” is a form of brainwashing.

  Remember the Holy Moly! Atheist Bus?

• Scriptural gamester’s Christmas: An XBox 360 Bible for the children’s stockings? Your nominees?
• Sick ?: Christian ? Or as former evangelist Frank Schaeffer warns, trawling for assassins?
• Palin’s parables: Going Rogue may not be quite as much a work of fiction as Left Behind, but Dan Gilgoff seems to think they’re aimed at the same general audience. Doesn’t he?
• Our Bulwer-Lytton religious journalism nominee wrote about a Bill Moyers Journal entitled Beyond Our Differences. ‘Twas a dark and stormy editorial:
  

  Despite the appearance of diversity, the interviewees were glaringly homogeneous in their religious pluralism. As a result, a significant portion of religious adherents, namely, those believing in some sort of exclusive religious claims, were cut-off from the conversation. A more fruitful discussion would have included religious practitioners that do not presuppose that there are a number of valid paths (Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, etc.) to the divine.

  For deliberate Bulwer-Lytton Wretched Writing contest fun, go here.

• Headline of (a recent) day: Teams report movement from Native American revivals : What does it mean?

Headline of the day nominee

Teams report movement from Native American revivals: What does it mean? Running away?

Edward George Bulwer-Lytton editorial nominee

‘Twas a dark and stormy editorial about a Bill Moyers Journal entitled Beyond Our Differences. Among so many other things, the editor wrote:

Despite the appearance of diversity, the interviewees were glaringly homogeneous in their religious pluralism. As a result, a significant portion of religious adherents, namely, those believing in some sort of exclusive religious claims, were cut-off from the conversation. A more fruitful discussion would have included religious practitioners that do not presuppose that there are a number of valid paths (Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, etc.) to the divine.

For deliberate Bulwer-Lytton Wretched Writing contest fun, go here.