Louisiana Baptist Message pay-to-read Web launched (skids)

The Louisiana Baptist Message’s new pay-to-read Web site apparently skidded on launch. They have rolled out a lurid red, top-heavy, new Web design which combines mostly subscriber-only content, some of which is free elsewhere, with incomplete sections (Plan of Salvation, Focus, Image Archive, Links of Interest).

A Southern Baptist official state newspaper with an empty Salvation section?

It is too early to draw lasting conclusions, but the early returns are not encouraging, for them.

We greeted as suicidal their announcement last year of pay-wall plans. And they’re not disappointing us. The Missouri Word & Way saw a slight decline (-8.18%) in Web traffic while the North Carolina Biblical Recorder saw a sharp increase (+160.7%) during the period of sharp Louisiana Baptist Message decline(-55.9%). The yearly change percentages are +428.77% for Word & Way, +105.84% for the Biblical Recorder and -19.02% for the Baptist Message.

The Baptist Message changes also disrupted existing links to its earlier content. For example, their redesign broke the links to a Louisiana Baptist Messenger Editor Kelly Boggs editorial in CounterFactual Kelly Boggs.

Jan. 17, 2010

The combined effects of putting up a pay wall, redesign/launch errors and uninspiring content are likely to keep the Baptist Message in the Web readership basement. Or below. Where their print circulation, and that of the other Baptist state newspapers, was already going.

For this redesign and broken launch, however, they may deserve a nomination to Web Pages That Suck.

We will follow their experiment with flagging interest.

Religious Freedom Day

January 16 is Religious Freedom Day, commemorating the Virginia General Assembly’s adoption of Thomas Jefferson’s landmark Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom on January 16, 1786. In his proclamation | [.pdf] this year, President Barack Obama writes:

The Virginia Statute was more than a law. It was a statement of principle, declaring freedom of religion as the natural right of all humanity — not a privilege for any government to give or take away. Penned by Thomas Jefferson and championed in the Virginia legislature by James Madison, it barred compulsory support of any church and ensured the freedom of all people to profess their faith openly, without fear of persecution. Five years later, the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights followed the Virginia Statute’s model, stating, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .”.

This is a good time to review both the frequently misstated history of religious freedom in the United States, and the frequently misdescribed current law: Religious Expression in American Life: A Joint Statement of Current Law.

The struggle to variously redefine the former and rewrite the latter is ongoing.

‘A Once-Catholic Episcopalian Looks at Benedict’s Offer’

When the pope defended his outreach to Anglicans as ecumenism, Pulitzer Prize winning author Jack Miles explored the impact of a reverse offer.

In the Catholic magazine Commonweal, Miles wrote:

If the Episcopal Church were in a tit-for-tat mood, it could issue its own marching orders. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who occupies the same position within her church that Rowan Williams occupies within his (and who happens to be the daughter of Catholic converts to Episcopalianism), might issue an open invitation to the member groups of the Roman Catholic Leadership Conference of Women Religious to disaffiliate from Rome and reaffiliate — as religious congregations, not individual women — with a church where they would be welcomed for their often superior education as well as their selfless charity, rather than suspected of…well, whatever it is that the Vatican suspects them of.

While that idea has a touch of enlightening humor about it, the point is painfully clear and becomes more so when he turns to the Eucharist. About Holy Communion he writes:

The Rev. Canon Colville Smythe, a retired priest who generously volunteers his services at St. Edmund’s, spoke wisely, I thought, in a sermon on the Feast of Christ the King, when he said that Holy Communion, rather than Baptism, is the sacrament that nowadays typically begins a seeker’s journey toward sacramental Christianity. Baptism, in our time, typically comes later. In Smythe’s view, we should thus welcome all visitors—not just visiting baptized Christians—to receive the sacrament. As it happened, his sermon was delivered on the day when the New York Times reported that Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Rhode Island had asked Representative Patrick J. Kennedy not to receive Communion because of his position on abortion. Not long before this, Archbishop Raymond Burke, who in 2004 took a cue from then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and led the way in denying Communion to presidential candidate John Kerry, had denounced Boston’s Cardinal Séan O’Malley for allowing the late Ted Kennedy to receive a Catholic funeral.

In that context, you may indeed wonder with Miles what peace conservative Episcopalians will find if they accept Pope Benedict’s offer to swim the Tiber.

We believe Miles’ piece, “Trading Places,” is well worth your time, here.

Manhattan Declaration online petition pitch: Fail

Not quite two months after the Manhattan Declaration was unveiled they have less than half the 1 million signatures they wanted by Dec. 1. Thus having failed, they emailed all of the signers this week, pitching efforts to date as a success. And calling for a push on to the million.

The pitch dwells on rumors of success, and outlines a special effort by four Catholic archbishops:

Just ten days ago, Cardinal Rigali of Philadelphia, Archbishop Wuerl of Washington, DC, Archbishop Dolan of New York and Archbishop Kurtz of Louisville reached out to all of their brother Catholic bishops asking them to spread this document throughout their dioceses and encourage their clergy and faithful to study it and join as signatories.

That signature shortfall they’ve failed to confess is unexpected. After all, the signatures are unverified.

If the petition gatherer does not somehow verify that there is one, unique, living human being who has associated himself or herself with each signature (and not the same human being behind more than one signature), the petition is open to padding.

The Manhattan Declaration‘s signature-collection process does filter for robots. But apparently does no other identity verification. Not even a verification email to the address signers give them.

Our testing suggests that it just bumps the counter each time someone fills the form out properly and “signs.”.

Which means people can sign several times under bogus names, and that a suitably unethical person can sign for you. Most anti-spam software sidetracks their email appeals. So you might never know.

Yes. That million-signature petition, assuming they eventually get their million signatures — it’s_a_joke.

One Haitian quietly informs, struggling at the end

Interview with Haitian @cat_laine by @XeniJardin of @BoingBoing:

Interview transcript here.

[H/T: @Maddow]

Scientology sues Sandy Springs; Member is sued in N.J.

Sandy Springs, Ga., slowed the Church of Scientology’s dramatic 2009 growth by denying a rezoning required to expand a former office building into their Georgia headquarters.

Ever aggressive, Scientology filed two lawsuits on Wednesday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported:

The church filed religious discrimination complaints in U.S. District Court on Wednesday and Fulton County Superior Court on Thursday.

Both suits contend that the city infringed on the church’s religious rights in the City Council’s vote Dec. 15 that approved the rezoning of the building at Roswell Road and Glenridge Drive but denied the church’s request to add a fourth floor by enclosing a basement parking garage, saying there wasn’t enough parking.

The pre-lawsuit Scientology vs. Sandy Springs story was blogged in detail by xenubarb at Daily Kos.

Conflict and Scientology go hand-in-hand. Remember last year’s dramatic exits, legal reversals, impending movie, investigations and media takedowns?

Ed Brayton at ScienceBlogs writes about another Scientology lawsuit.

In this one, a politically active New Jersey a businessman is being sued for allegedly attempting to force Scientology upon his employees.

Michael Deak of My CentralJersey.com writes:

Calling a lawsuit brought against his business as “replete with misrepresentations and outright lies,” a new member of the Borough Council is denying the charges, including one that an employee was fired for not becoming a member of the Church of Scientology.

John Buckley, who on New Year’s Day was sworn into a three-year term as a councilman after winning a seat in the November election, said he and his company, Open House Direct “will vigorously defend against these unfounded claims and to also demonstrate that this is nothing but an attempt to harass us and to hurt our ability to do business.”

Three former employees — Maurice Grays, John Knapp and Larry Kolakowski — last month filed suit in Superior Court seeking legal relief, claiming they were victims of a hostile work environment and retaliation at the company on Hamilton Street.

Add to these the threatened Scientology suit in France against the Daughters of Saint Paul [which we blogged about earlier this month] and you have the makings of another fascinating year of watching Scientology-in-action.

Disabled often still struggle to attend church

Physical barriers to church attendance are still a problem writes Dionne Walker in a story published by USA Today:

Years after federal law required accommodations for the disabled, separation of church and state means houses of worship remain largely beyond the law’s reach. State laws and denominational measures meant to take up the slack are tricky to enforce and face resistance from churches who call them both costly and impractical.

The issue is gaining new attention as the disabled community expands, fed by aging baby boomers and a growing number of people with intellectual disabilities who are demanding a more prominent place in the pews.A Centers for Disease Control report released in April found that an estimated 1 in 5 U.S. adults _47.5 million people — reported a disability. The National Organization on Disability estimates less than half of disabled Americans attend services at least once a month compared to 57% without disabilities.

Read the rest here.

The Episcopal Disability Network suggests more than 50 ways to make your parish more accessible.

[H/T: Episcopal Cafe]

Puerto Rican blogger grieves Haiti’s loss

Global Voices, a globe-spanning blog community that was born at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, has created a resource-rich Haiti Earthquake 2010 aggregation.

There a Puerto Rican blogger writes of Haiti’s regional significance:

I have an old debt with Haiti. We all have. Haiti is the first womb, the place where the Caribbean was born, it’s the Africa from within, the unnamable pain, the scar. It was the first country in America where a black person dared think of himself as free, to think of himself as a leader of the people (Toussaint L’ouverture).

Haiti has paid heavily for this impertinence.

They are still paying.

The Old Empire that harbored a revolution (Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité) for the West has not forgiven them. Even they have not forgiven themselves, like those who have made a parody of the initial dreams of liberty, fraternity and equality (Henry Christophe, Duvalier, Aristide). And now this. Haiti under rubbles.

What sort of ancestral crime we have not finished paying for?

Why does the earth hate us so much (Le Damnées de la Terre, always, les damnées de la terre)?

How do we get up now?

Because the Caribbean cannot walk without Haiti.

It stumbles, it hits the dust.

It cannot keep on dreaming the dream that gave birth to it. It cannot keep on trying (egalité, fraternité, liberté) to make it a reality.

Haiti is falling again. And we are also falling.

We cannot keep on walking.

Not without Haiti.

Without Haiti we all fall.

There is so much more. Please visit and explore.

‘Onward Christian Athletes’ isn’t about Brit Hume

Tom Krattenmaker says the takeaway from his book is:

Pro sports fans see a lot of religious expression in pro sports—players pointing up to God after a touchdown or home run, for example, or thanking and praising Jesus in post-game interviews—and that was my starting point for the research. As I began to dig into it I was struck by how much organization and strategy exists behind and under all of this. Not to say it’s secret or sinister or anything, because it’s not, but fans don’t realize how much work goes on behind the scenes by the Christian organizations that minister to athletes and leverage sports to reach the public with their evangelistic message.

Brit Hume merely called oblique attention to the issue, as Krattenmaker explains in a discussion of his book, Onward Christian Athletes: Turning Ballparks into Pulpits and Players into Preachers, at Religion Dispatches:

To get us started on the new decade, we had Fox News commentator Brit Hume reminding us of the other primarily objective of the faith-in-sports movement: to use athletes as poster men for the virtues of faith and as carriers of the evangelistic message. Recall what Hume said in his now-famous (infamous?) over-the-air faith pitch to Tiger. Not only would a full Christian conversion bring the fallen golf hero forgiveness and redemption, Hume said. It would make him “a great example” to the world.

Clearly, Krattenmaker’s isn’t another “how to evangelize” manual.

Interesting stuff, if a little convoluted. Read on.

Ugandan president to block gay genocide bill [Updates]

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni told members of the National Resistance Movement’s (NRM) legislative caucus on Jan 13 that he was going to block the gay genocide bill. George Conger of Religious Intelligencer wrote:

“I [Museveni] told them that this bill was brought up by a private member and I have not even had time to discuss it with him. It is neither the government nor the NRM Party’s” bill, he told legislators, according to Ugandan press reports.

“This is a foreign policy issue and we have to discuss it in a manner that does not compromise our principles but also takes care of our foreign policy interests,” the president said.

Xan Rice of the Guardian reported today:

Uganda has indicated it will bow to international pressure and amend draconian anti-homosexual legislation that includes the death penalty for HIV-positive people convicted of having gay sex.

. . .

,p>The proposed law, which has been pushed by local evangelical preachers and vocally supported by senior government officials, also threatens life imprisonment for anyone convicted of gay sex.

While broadly supported domestically, the legislation has caused a storm of protest abroad and consternation from western donors who fund a large chunk of Uganda’s budget.

Updates

VOA says nothing has changed:

The Ugandan foreign minister denies the government is backing away from proposed anti-gay legislation because of foreign policy implications, saying the government is still discussing its position on the issue. Gay rights activists express caution over reports the president has backed away from the bill.

Jim Burroway foresees a move toward compromise legislation.