Pulpit & Pen informs us that The Gospel Coalition‘s west coast conference, Enduring Faithfulness, that was to be held at Grace Community Church will now be held elsewhere. (P&P posted a graphic from TGC’s website that has yet to be updated with the change of venue.) Here’s P&P’s report:
Developing: Grace Community Church (GCC), home congregation of Pastor John MacArthur, has canceled the church property and facilities as a venue for the West Coast Gospel Coalition Conference. Continue reading
The piece over at Christian Post is a follow up to an investigative report conducted by the Chicago Tribune entitled “After Years of Inquiries, Willow Creek Pastor Denies Misconduct Allegations.” CP reporter Leonardo Blair has the latest:
Megachurch pastor John Ortberg insisted Monday that the investigation of multiple sexual misconduct allegations by several women against Bill Hybels, founder and senior pastor of the multi-campus Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, was “poorly designed” and exposed the women to “grave risks.” Continue reading
(Pulpit & Pen News) Where would an author go if portions of their previous books have been allegedly plagiarized, ghost-written, and their ranking on the bestseller’s list paid for with pilfered congregational funds? They would go pitch their tent in the charismatic camp, of course, as charismaticism is the proverbial City of Refuge for virtually any disgraced or defrocked pastor. They will accept just about anybody.
(Claire Wolters – The Temple News) At the beginning of each semester, political science professor Heath Fogg Davis asks his students to write down their personal pronouns on note cards so he doesn’t misgender anyone.
Misgendering is the act of blatantly or unintentionally referring to someone by incorrect gender pronouns.
Davis, a transgender man, took up this approach this year to promote gender diversity and inclusivity in the classroom. He puts a lot of thought into the way he asks students about their gender identities.
(Anne Gulland – The Telegraph) The report of the first ever case of “super-gonorrhoea” – a bug which is resistant to frontline antibiotics – comes as no surprise to experts in sexually transmitted diseases.
Syphilis, HIV and a relatively new sexually transmitted disease – Mycoplasma genitalium – are also developing resistance to antimicrobial treatments.
Yesterday, Public Health England announced the world’s “worst ever” case of super-gonorrhea, contracted by a British man after a sexual encounter with a woman in South East Asia. The main antibiotic combination failed to cure the infection and doctors are hoping that one final treatment may work.
(Heather Clark – Christian News Network) The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio and the transgender advocacy group Lambda Legal have filed a lawsuit against the Ohio Department of Health and the Office of Vital Statistics in an effort to force the State to allow those with gender dysphoria to change the sex on their birth certificate.
The organizations claim that the State’s practice of declining to issue an amended document deprives the person of an “accurate” birth certificate.
(Jeffrey Lord – CNSNews) Well that didn’t take long.
My prediction was made in this space on October 28, 2017. The headline: “Laura Ingraham: New Fox Star, New Left-Wing Target.”
In which I said the following of the Fox announcement that Laura Ingraham- she the radio talker, ex-Reagan staffer, Justice Clarence Thomas Supreme Court clerk and all-around conservative superstar – would be hosting a new Fox opinion show at 10 pm weekdays. I wrote:
Charismatic journalist Stephen Strang’s skilled tap-dance around CNN host’s straight-forward questions rivals that of the greatest tap dancer of all time, Fred Astaire. Heather Clark of Christian News Network has the story:
CNN “New Day” co-host Alisyn Camerota grilled Charisma Magazine founder Stephen Strang on Wednesday in asking why he and other evangelicals continue to unconditionally support Donald Trump and seemingly brush aside or overlook alleged impropriety in his personal life. Continue reading
According to new research conducted by the Barna Report, a large number of U.S. Christians are clueless that the Lord Jesus gave specific instructions to His followers to make disciples (share the Gospel of salvation with the lost and teach them the entirety of God’s truth found in the Bible) as they go about their daily lives. Here’s Barna’s stunning report:
Matthew 28:18-20 is the most well-known biblical record of what is commonly referred to extra-biblically as “the Great Commission.” But despite the significance of these and other verses that call Christians to “go and make disciples of all nations,” a surprising proportion of churchgoing Christians in the U.S. are generally unaware of these famous words from Jesus. Continue reading
(Fox News) Facebook might be listening in from your smartphone to determine where you are for targeted advertising, according to testimony from the computer expert who sparked the Cambridge Analytica controversy.
In a hearing with the British House of Commons media committee, Chris Wylie, the expert who accused Facebook of improperly harnessing user data to help Donald Trump’s presidential bid, said Facebook and other smartphone apps might be trying to figure out users’ environment to “improve the contextual value of the advertising itself,” according to reports.
(Heather Clark – Christian News Network) “The script for Living Biblically reads like it has been written by your typical, cynical, atheistic, internet trolls, as the story lines feed into almost every stereotypical caricature of Christianity that we find on the World Wide Web.”
Despite its producers stated intentions not to be offensive, but to bring religion into primetime television, a blasphemous new sitcom on CBS called “Living Biblically” is being decried as a “Hollywood mockery of Christians” and in need of prayer itself. Continue reading
(Fox News) A local Planned Parenthood office in Pennsylvania had some advice for the creators at Disney Tuesday after tweeting about the need for princesses who have “had an abortion” or are “trans.”
The tweet from Planned Parenthood Keystone, which was viewed by Fox News but has since been deleted, said, “We need a disney princess who’s had an abortion. We need a disney princess who’s pro-choice. We need a disney princess who’s an undocumented immigrant. We need a disney princess who’s actually a union worker. We need a disney princess who’s trans.”
(Baptist Press) Frank S. Page has resigned as president and chief executive officer of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, effective today (March 27) over what is described as “a morally inappropriate relationship in the recent past.”
Florida pastor Stephen Rummage, chairman of the Executive Committee, released a 300-word statement Tuesday afternoon (March 27) in behalf of the EC’s officers noting the circumstances of Page’s resignation:
“Last evening, the officers of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee met via phone conference with Dr. Frank Page during which he announced his plans for retirement. Today, I spoke with Dr. Page and learned that his retirement announcement was precipitated by a morally inappropriate relationship in the recent past. Continue reading
(The Western Journal) A transgender woman claimed to be drugging attendees of a conservative conference in Phoenix, Arizona on Saturday morning.
The biological male and an alleged Starbucks employee — identified on Twitter as “Lauren” — claimed to be slipping estrogen pills into the drinks of unsuspecting customers at the conference.
“I love my job at the phoenix convention center starbucks and i love slipping my spare estradiol pills in the coffee of anyone wearing a #WesternConservativeConference lanyard,” Lauren tweeted.
(HuffPost) Fans of a beloved contemporary Christian hymn won’t get any satisfaction in a new church hymnal.
The committee putting together a new hymnal for the Presbyterian Church (USA) dropped the popular hymn “In Christ Alone” because the song’s authors refused to change a phrase about the wrath of God.
The original lyrics say that “on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.” The Presbyterian Committee on Congregational Song wanted to substitute the words, “the love of God was magnified.” … Disclaimer
(Paul Bios – Dailywire) “I wanted to see ourselves in the characters”
According to an exclusive by Entertainment Weekly, Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel “Little Women” will be “reimagined” in a graphic novel in honor of its 150th anniversary. Except this one will have a twist: The title character Jo March will be lesbian.
“A whole new generation is about to be introduced to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, the classic novel will be adapted into a vibrant graphic novel form for young readers, in celebration of its 150th anniversary,” reports EW.
(Paul Bios – Dailywire) “Gerald Dols, a Christian convert, explained in a 2008 radio interview with Concerned Women for America that Harvey Milk convinced him to run away from his family in Minnesota and join him in San Francisco when Dols was just a teenager.”
When the world discovered that actor Kevin Spacey had an alleged penchant for underage boys, the world rightfully shunned him from the public space. Civil rights icon Harvey Milk, on the other hand, has received no such condemnation and has now been lifted to progressive sainthood.
(Thomas T. Williams – Breitbart) The Vatican has taken new measures to punish critics of Pope Francis in a move that seems to belie the pope’s earlier calls for greater dialogue and debate within the Church.
On Thursday, the Rome-based Sovereign Order of Malta, which reports directly to the Holy See, suspended historian Henry Sire after he was revealed to be the author of the bestselling book The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy, a critical examination of the pontificate of Pope Francis.
(Michael W. Chapman – CNSNews) “Christianity as a default, as a norm, is gone, and probably gone for good — or at least for the next 100 years.”
A new report, Europe’s Young Adults and Religion, reveals that European youth (ages 16-29) have abandoned the Christianity of their ancestors in large numbers, and now many young people, in some countries more than 50%, do not identify with any religion at all. In addition, large majorities of young Europeans say they never pray.
(Heather Clark – Christian News Network) A woman with Down syndrome recently addressed the United Nations in Geneva to decry what she sees as eugenics against those who have an extra chromosome.
“The future of Down’s syndrome is in grave danger. Around the world, more than 9o percent of babies found to have Down syndrome are aborted up to birth. A mother’s womb is the most dangerous place for a baby with Down syndrome to be,” lamented Charlotte Fien, 22, of the United Kingdom.
(Heather Clark – Christian News Network) A megachurch minister recently told his congregation that he thinks it’s “insanity” to believe that men will go to Hell for rejecting Christ, and claimed that it is “not even what Jesus believes.” His comments have been met with outcry as blasphemy and false teaching from many who have viewed an online video clip of his remarks.
Michael Walrond, Jr. leads First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem, an assembly that has expanded from 350 members to 10,000 members within the past 14 years, according to its website.
(Kate Shellnutt – Christianity Today) Andy Savage, the pastor who disclosed his decades-old assault on a teen in his former youth group to an applauding congregation, stepped down from his position at a Memphis megachurch on Tuesday.
Savage’s January 7 remarks on his repentance regarding the 1998 incident launched months of discussion among Christians, coverage in national news media, and an investigation by Highpoint Church, where he served as teaching pastor. … Disclaimer
(Nicole Winfield – RNS) The head of the Vatican’s communications department has resigned over a scandal about a letter from the retired pope that the communications chief mischaracterized in public and then had digitally manipulated in a photograph sent to the media.
The Vatican said Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Monsignor Dario Vigano on Wednesday (March 21) and named his deputy, Monsignor Lucio Adrian Ruiz, to run the Secretariat for Communications. … Disclaimer
(Nicholas Tompson & Fred Vogelstein – Wired) Two weeks ago, Facebook learned that The New York Times, Guardian, and Observer were working on blockbuster stories based on interviews with a man named Christopher Wylie. The core of the tale was familiar but the details were new, and now the scandal was attached to a charismatic face with a top of pink hair. Four years ago, a slug of Facebook data on 50 million Americans was sucked down by a UK academic named Aleksandr Kogan, and wrongly sold to Cambridge Analytica. Wylie, who worked at the firm and has never talked publicly before, showed the newspapers a trove of emails and invoices to prove his allegations. Worse, Cambridge appears to have lied to Facebook about entirely deleting the data.
(Clarion Ledger) Mississippi moved quickly toward a legal confrontation over the nation’s most restrictive abortion law Monday.
Within six hours, the governor signed a bill banning most abortions after 15 weeks of gestation, the state’s lone abortion clinic sued, and a federal judge set a Tuesday morning hearing to consider blocking the restrictions.
Abortion opponents sought the confrontation, hoping federal courts will ultimately prohibit abortions before a fetus is viable. Current federal law blocks such restrictions by states.