Sampled new CT blog for inspiration yet?

[MrVersatile48]

I just have time to link what must report on @ 15 religious news stories, going by how far the marker had gone down the page edge when I'd read the 1st 5:-

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/

I'm sure readers will find some of them fit existing threads in several of our forums, & you may want to start new threads about others - I accidentally deleted a fuller report @ the Christianity v. atheism debate on Friday, before I could post it - see 5th item

& the IVF being back at Georgetown - see 4th

Back Sun pm, DV

Must go

Ian

 

[MrVersatile48]

3 new items in today's email

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/

I'm mainly posting the link to encourage more folk to campaign for Christ on lunchtime phone-ins

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2 & http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool start in @ 20 mins

Here's a few extracts:-

Profiting from the Poor

Is it time to return to the ban on usury?

Rob Moll | May 14, 2007

In recent years, a range of businesses have made financing more readily available to even the riskiest of borrowers. Greater access to credit has put cars, computers, credit cards, and even homes within reach for many more of the working poor. But this remaking of the marketplace for low-income consumers has a dark side: Innovative and zealous firms have lured unsophisticated shoppers by the hundreds of thousands into a thicket of debt from which many never emerge.

There may be money to be made lending to the poor. It may make business sense, though the recent sub-prime lending collapse shows the risks in lending to the poor. And it may allow the poor to buy things they couldn't otherwise afford.

But is it right?

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More in a reply or 2 ...


Ian

 

[MrVersatile48]

Onward, Christian Lobbyists

Should ministries angle for earmarks?

David Neff | May 14, 2007 7:58AM

There’s been a legitimate debate about President Bush’s faith-based initiative and the wisdom of ministries seeking government funds to carry out the “secular†aspect of their social ministriesâ€â€helping the homeless, the unemployed, the drug addicted, the victims of spousal abuse.

Will such ministries over-secularize their efforts just to keep government inspectors happyâ€â€or their own consciences clean? Should the church do such ministry without an appropriate spiritual component?

Those are all legitimate areas for debate. But a New York Times story posted this past weekend raises a related and still more problematic issue.

Religious Groups Reap Federal Aid for Pet Projects reports that a number of religious institutions and ministries have now hired lobbyists to seek earmarks for their special projects.

Unlike grants made through the usual welfare programs, earmark funding carries little or no accountability. No regulators. No inspectors. And earmarks are a multifaceted problem for our federal budget. (See Chuck Colson’s CT column, "The Earmark Epidemic" from October 2006.)

 

[MrVersatile48]

At Georgetown, InterVarsity is Back

Banned last August, the ministry sought, found reconciliation.

David Neff | May 9, 2007 4:39PM

Last year, just before the students returned to the campus of the Roman Catholic Georgetown University, the school's Protestant chaplain informed six evangelical student ministries that they were being "disafilliated." That is, they could not use campus facilities for their events, could not advertise their events on campus, and could not use the Georgetown name or logo.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship was one of the affected ministries, and the irony could not have been sharper: the daughter of IVCF president Alec Hill was a Georgetown student.

InterVarsity has been fighting legal battles at public campuses defending students' right to join voluntary associations on campus that could hold to the standards of Christian belief and behavior. There have been some very positive results from these legal actions at, for example, Rutgers (2002) and the University of Wisconsin-Superior (2007).

Georgetown, though, is a private, church-related university, and it had the legal right to ban any non-Catholic group from its campus. But that's no way to run a university. As Alec Hill said at the time, "As a parent, I am surprised Georgetown as a major university would close down freedom of association for their students. That seems contrary to Georgetown's ethos. It's an open marketplace of ideas."

Well, today I received a news release from IVCF announcing that Georgetown had completely restructured things, clearing the way for IVCF and other similar ministries to reaffiliate. Read InterVarsity's news release here.

While IVCF had to bring legal pressure elsewhere, genuine dialogue and listening seemed to work in this case.

A university open the free exchange of ideas! What a blast from the past!

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

You may feel led to relate that thought to the draconian atheist brainwashing that forbids all criticism of neo-Darwin drivel & all presentation of the massive evidence for Intelligent Design by an Almighty, All-Knowing Creator

This lyric humourously links several related threads

All The Wonders Of The Universe

http://www.christianforums.net/viewtopic.php?t=18462

Just time to post that blog's Christianity v atheism feature before I go to lunch...

Ian

 

[MrVersatile48]

Christians vs. Atheists

Why Winning a Debate Isn't Enough.

Stan Guthrie | May 9, 2007 9:01AM

If the debate on this website between Doug Wilson, a a pastor and educator, and atheist pundit Christopher Hitchens has whetted your appetite for more, you'll want to check out "Nightline" tonight. Evangelist Ray Comfort and actor Kirk Cameron will debate two members of the so-called "Rational Response Squad."

The RRS, as you may know, has organized the Web-based "Blasphemy Challenge" to encourage people to blaspheme the Holy Spirit as a way to declare their freedom from and lack of fear over all religious beliefs.

The founder of the movement, Brian Sapient, equates theism with belief in the tooth fairy, saying, "There isn't any good reason to believe in God."

This debate, which will be available online at 1 p.m. Central today on ABC News Now, promises to be interesting. I've heard Comfort, a bold street evangelist, speak, and I expect him to do well.

I am concerned, however, over the parameters of this debate. Comfort promises to "prove" God's existence scientifically and without reference to the Bible or faith.

First, while faith in God is eminently reasonable (the world's greatest minds, including everyone from C.S. Lewis to Isaac Newton to Francis Collins, have affirmed Christian faith), faith is still required, for "without faith it is impossible to please God."

Second, while Christian faith made scientific discovery possible and many of the world's first and greatest scientists have been Christians, restricting the debate to things scientific unfortunately plays into the current prejudice that the only "facts" that are real or valiid are based in science.

But there are many fields of inquiry that are not open to the scientific method (history being one of them). Thus, the terms of the debate will only take us so far....

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Those lunchtime phone-ins & others will be on now

Enjoy

& pray for Christians called to..

er..

call or email, OK?

Ian