Christian News Network reports:
[The] American Baptist College is defending its invitation to an openly lesbian United Church of Christ minister, asserting that Christians are making an “idol” of the Bible.
“It’s sad that people use religion and idolatry of the Bible to demoralize same-gender-loving people,” American Baptist College President Forrest Harris told The Tennessean on Wednesday.
According to Christian Headlines:
Outspoken Christian leader Franklin Graham wrote a Facebook post this week that referenced homosexual persecution and said the LGBT community needs to repent. Charisma News reports that Graham mentioned a recent act of ISIS brutality in which a gay man was thrown off a rooftop and then stoned to death.
Christian News Network shares this touching story:
Photographs of a baby boy that was born at 19 weeks have been making an impact around the world for life as they demonstrate to viewers the humanity and perfection of the unborn child.
“I shared these photos so my friends and family could see my perfect child,” Lexi Fretz of Greencastle, Pa. wrote in a blog post. “I never, ever could have imagined that it would spread across the world like this.”
Fox 8 reports:
It’s a business that sells itself on being non-judgmental but Planet Fitness has allegedly revoked the membership of a woman for complaining, according to WNEM.
Yvette Cormier, a member at the Midland location, says she had no idea what that meant until a few days ago.
“I was stunned and shocked. He looked like a man. He did not look like a woman,” says Cormier. Cormier is talking about a person who walked into the woman’s locker room while she was getting undressed. She says she couldn’t believe her eyes.
Time reports:
More than 300 veteran Republican lawmakers, operatives and consultants have filed a friend of the court brief at the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage late Thursday.
The amicus brief, organized by former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, was filed for the four same-sex marriage cases the Court will hear on April 28 that could legalize the unions nationwide. In 2013, Mehlman marshaled a similar effort for the case that overturned California’s Proposition 8, which had banned same-sex marriage in the state.
According to News Max, Equality Utah executive director Troy Williams said at a news conference, “This is an historic day. People from diverse backgrounds have come together to craft what no one thought was possible.”
News Max writes:
State Sen. Stuart Adams, a Republican who led negotiations on the proposal, said at the news conference that they’ve found a way to respect the rights of some while not infringing on the rights of others.
“If Utah can do this, my opinion, it can be done anywhere else in the nation.”
Once again Hollywood is pushing the envelope. Christian News Network reports that “The Fosters” is generating controversy after two male teens kissed each other on screen. This was the first time same-sex teens kissed on American television. That this would happen is not surprising as the show’s creators are homosexuals and singer/actress Jennifer Lopez is the producer.
Campus Reform is reporting a puzzling story out of Chicopee, Mass. Evidently, pro-abortion congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) has been invited to speak at Elms College’s 84th annual commencement ceremony. What’s puzzling is that Elms is a Roman Catholic college. In a statement Elms announced their reason for inviting Lewis:
Lewis’ personal and political focus on civil rights fits perfectly with Elms’ commitment to social justice. As commencement speaker, he will deliver a humbling and inspiring message for the Class of 2015 to carry into the world.
Elms made no mention of the fact that during Lewis’ 29 years as a U.S. Congressman, he has been fiercely pro-abortion and has earned a 100 percent approval rating from the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.
Over at Patheos, Warren Throckmorton has brought our attention to Dr. Ben Carson’s apology for saying that being gay is a choice. In his apology, which you will find on his Facebook page, Dr. Carson pointed out that:
I’m a doctor trained in multiple fields of medicine, who was blessed to work at perhaps the finest institution of medical knowledge in the world. Some of our brightest minds have looked at this debate, and up until this point there have been no definitive studies that people are born into a specific sexuality. We do know, however, that we are always born male and female. And I know that we are all made in God’s image, which means we are all deserving of respect and dignity.
CNSNews.com writes:
Being gay is a choice, because “a lot of people” go to jail straight, but when they leave, they’re gay, Dr. Ben Carson said in an interview with CNN’s “New Day” on Wednesday.
“A lot of people who go into prison, go into prison straight, and when they come out, they’re gay. So did something happen while they were in there?” Carson said, who has said marriage should be between a man and a woman.
Christian Headlines reports that terrorist group ISIS has purportedly set standards for themselves. By releasing 19 people they kidnapped, they can get credibility “by showing that they follow rules and that they have some kind of transparent process that follows their particular implementation of Sharia law.”
According to the Christian News Network, in less than a year after astronomers announced that they had proof of the universe beginnings, those same astronomers have retracted their claims. We now learn that the findings were not proof of the Big Bang after all and that the astronomers’ conclusions were incorrect.
According to the Israeli National News:
In response to the Presbyterian Church USA’s (PCUSA) decision to divest from American companies doing business with Israel, Shurat Hadin (Israel Law Center) filed a whistleblower action against the organization with the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) over meetings PCUSA held with Hezbollah terrorists.
According to the Christian News Network:
Regional presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church (USA) are voting on whether to ratify a vote taken by the General Assembly and regional delegates last year to change the definition of marriage in its law book and to allow ministers to perform same-sex “marriages” in states where the practice is legal.
Christian Headlines reports on an online survey of young adults. According to the survey, “Young adults who said their fathers explained ‘biblical principles’ to them on a daily or weekly basis growing up were significantly more likely to say they lived by typical Christian behavior as adults by praying, volunteering, reading the Bible, and attending church frequently and avoiding pornography, marijuana use, abortion, and co-habitation.”
Former Mars Hill Bible Church pastor and Emergent leader Rob Bell is a controversial figure. Recently, Bell was invited by Oprah Winfrey to host The Rob Bell Show on her OWN channel. Bell denies the existence of hell, promotes “Mother God,” and insists that homosexuality is not a sin, thus our “homosexual brothers and sisters” must be accepted by the Church. Therefore, it is no surprise that he is reportedly thrilled by the idea that same-sex ‘marriage’ may soon become legal in America. Berean Research offers Christians this advice:
When it comes to heretical teachers like Bell, we are NOT to “eat the meat and spit out the bones (advice found nowhere in Scripture), but instead we are to follow the command to mark and avoid false teachers.
Christian Headlines reports:
The Florida high school that told a student not to say “God bless America” during morning announcements said this week that the student did not violate the U.S. Constitution.
“Upon consultation with legal counsel and review of legal advisories, the Nassau County School District has taken the position that a student’s use of the phrase “God Bless America” during the morning announcements at Yulee High School does not violate the Constitution of the United States,” the school district said in a statement.
In 2014 WORLD Magazine revealed that Seattle’s Mars Hill Church paid a California-based marketing company somewhere around $250,000 to ensure that a book by its pastor Mark Driscoll and coauthored with his wife, Grace made the New York Times best-seller list. Some say the practice is “dishonoring to the Lord.” The magazine now reports that popular pastor and author David Jeremiah’s ministry, Turning Point, purchased copies of at least three of Jeremiah’s books to ensure that they would make the New York Times bestseller list. Last year WORLD asked Jeremiah about his book marketing practices, to which he replied: “You can’t just write a book and say I’m not going to have anything to do with marketing. If you don’t care enough about it to try and figure out how to get it in the hands of other people, nobody else is going to either.” In the acknowledgments section of his 2012 book God Loves You, Jeremiah even credits the man who got Driscoll in so much trouble – the president of Result Source, Kevin Small – as the “genius behind the plan.”
Yahoo News reports:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday urged European Jews to move to Israel after a Jewish man was killed in an attack outside Copenhagen’s main synagogue.
“Israel is your home. We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe,” Netanyahu said in a statement, repeating a similar call after attacks by jihadists in Paris last month when four Jews were among the dead.
The Daily Mail reports that New Age guru Shirley MacLaine “has provoked widespread fury by claiming the victims of the Holocaust may have brought their fate upon themselves.” Moreover, she insinuates that the “six million Jews and millions of others systematically murdered in Hitler’s death camps in the 1940s were ‘balancing their karma’ for crimes committed in past lives.” The Hollywood star also offered this bizarre speculation:
‘What if most Holocaust victims were balancing their karma from ages before, when they were Roman soldiers putting Christians to death, the Crusaders who murdered millions in the name of Christianity, soldiers with Hannibal, or those who stormed across the Near East with Alexander? The energy of killing is endless and will be experienced by the killer and the killee.’