Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Jeremy Caverley Calls into On the Wall Radio: Crimes Against Children on Facebook Pages
Jeremy Caverley Calls into Active Christian Media: On the Wall Radio Crimes Against Children on Facebook Pages via Blog Talk Radio~be warned ADULT CONTENT http://www.blogtalkradio.com/acmedia/2012/05/08/crimes-against-children-on-fa...
Young Adults Are Abandoning Church In Record Numbers — Is This the Solution?
Christian churches in America are struggling to attract and retain
young adults. Considering that appealing to these individuals is
essential if houses of worship hope to develop and progress, diverse
denominations are beginning to team up rather than competing against one
another for congregants. Take, for example, Charlotte ONE,
a collaborative organization of around 40 churches that have come
together in an attempt to attract 20 and 30 somethings in Charlotte,
North Carolina.
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Naomi Schaefer Riley covered this intriguing project as well as the many questions that denominations are faced with when it comes to courting young people in contemporary society. As Riley notes, the Barna Group has done a great deal of research on what causes young people to abandon Christian houses of worship, as church engagement has been found to fall by as much as 43 percent among individuals who fall between the ages of 18 and 29.
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WATCH VIDEO:
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Naomi Schaefer Riley covered this intriguing project as well as the many questions that denominations are faced with when it comes to courting young people in contemporary society. As Riley notes, the Barna Group has done a great deal of research on what causes young people to abandon Christian houses of worship, as church engagement has been found to fall by as much as 43 percent among individuals who fall between the ages of 18 and 29.
READ MORE
WATCH VIDEO:
Sears Breaks Promise, Resumes Selling X-Rated Material
A year after chain-store Sears agreed to stop selling
X-rated products on its website, the company has apparently once again
started offering pornographic material despite the protests of
pro-family organizations.
The American Family Association noticed the new offers on
the Sears website, which include sexually explicit products featuring
human bondage and sadomasochism. Last year, after a nine-month struggle
with the AFA and other pro-family organizations, the company removed the
content and even sent a letter to the AFA apologizing for causing any
offense."We sincerely apologize to any customers who were offended," Sears wrote in the statement. "Our agreements with our vendors prohibit content that is pornographic or sexually explicit in nature."
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D.C. Press Conference Addresses Religious Freedom, Increase in Persecution
On Thursday, May 3, a press conference was held in Washington, D.C., at
the National Press Club’s Bloomberg Room in hopes to address religious
freedom and the dramatic increase in the persecution of Christians.
According to reports, nearly 70 percent of the world’s 6.8 billion people live in countries with little or no freedom of religion, including many countries in the Middle East and Africa.
About 20 print and broadcast media outlets, and others, gathered to hear from Dr. Carl Moeller, president/CEO of Open Doors USA; Nina Shea, director for religious freedom at the Hudson Institute; Rev. Dr. Katharine Rhodes Henderson, president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City; Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, director of Interfaith Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center; who were among the panel of speakers that addressed the issue of embattled Christian communities. (Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was also scheduled to participate. However, he was unable to stay due to a family emergency. Adlerstein shared a statement from Cooper at the press conference.)
“We at Open Doors USA were here to champion the rights of persecuted Christians around the world,” said Moeller. “Basically, the thought behind the whole conference was to demonstrate a unity in regard to religious freedom.”
He said that the persecution of Christians and the attack on religious freedom was a major problem around the world. These organizations are coming together to say that it needs to be stopped. They are calling on government officials and the administration for help. There are also tools in place, such as the Congressional Scorecard (available at www.opendoorsusa.org) to help. Additionally, they are in support of HR 440, a bill that calls for the establishment of the Special Envoy to Promote Religious Freedom of Religious Minorities in the Near East and in South Central Asia. Proposed by Congressman Frank Wolf, the bill was read the second time on January 23, 2012 and it has been placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders (Calendar No. 292).
“It is important to everyone involved to come together as a group to say we are going to call on the United States government, administration, and the candidates, President Obama and Mitt Romney, to make our religious freedom a major component of the discussion of our freedoms here in the United States,” Moeller said.
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According to reports, nearly 70 percent of the world’s 6.8 billion people live in countries with little or no freedom of religion, including many countries in the Middle East and Africa.
About 20 print and broadcast media outlets, and others, gathered to hear from Dr. Carl Moeller, president/CEO of Open Doors USA; Nina Shea, director for religious freedom at the Hudson Institute; Rev. Dr. Katharine Rhodes Henderson, president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City; Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, director of Interfaith Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center; who were among the panel of speakers that addressed the issue of embattled Christian communities. (Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was also scheduled to participate. However, he was unable to stay due to a family emergency. Adlerstein shared a statement from Cooper at the press conference.)
“We at Open Doors USA were here to champion the rights of persecuted Christians around the world,” said Moeller. “Basically, the thought behind the whole conference was to demonstrate a unity in regard to religious freedom.”
He said that the persecution of Christians and the attack on religious freedom was a major problem around the world. These organizations are coming together to say that it needs to be stopped. They are calling on government officials and the administration for help. There are also tools in place, such as the Congressional Scorecard (available at www.opendoorsusa.org) to help. Additionally, they are in support of HR 440, a bill that calls for the establishment of the Special Envoy to Promote Religious Freedom of Religious Minorities in the Near East and in South Central Asia. Proposed by Congressman Frank Wolf, the bill was read the second time on January 23, 2012 and it has been placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders (Calendar No. 292).
“It is important to everyone involved to come together as a group to say we are going to call on the United States government, administration, and the candidates, President Obama and Mitt Romney, to make our religious freedom a major component of the discussion of our freedoms here in the United States,” Moeller said.
READ MORE
Thousands of Jews Prepare to Leave France For Israel
According to the Jewish Agency for Israel, over 5,000 Jews from throughout France attended
a fair in the heart of Paris about immigrating to Israel. The fair was
attended by the Chairman of the Jewish Agency, former member of Knesset,
Soviet expatriate and dissident Natan Sharansky. “I cannot recall
having seen such a massive number of people interested in aliyah [immigration]
since the days when lines of people stretched out of the Israeli
embassy in Moscow,” said Sharansky. The fair took place the same day as
the election that rousted Nicholas Sarkozy, a reliable anti-Iran voice
in Europe, from power, replacing him with the far less reliable Francois
Hollande, a socialist with heavy ties to anti-Israel populations.
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Soldiers' Bibles Exhibit a Walk Through American History
NEW YORK (RNS) -- The simplicity of the exhibit -- copies of the Bible resting in glass cases -- can be deceptive.
But the Museum of Biblical Art's exhibition, "Finding Comfort in Difficult Times: A Selection of Soldiers' Bibles," is American religious history come alive.
The exhibit showcases three dozen copies of Scriptures published for members of the U.S. Armed Forces from the Civil War onward, from leather-bound, 19th-century copies to contemporary Bibles clothed in camouflage.
But more than the Bibles themselves -- on long-term loan from the American Bible Society -- the exhibit tells the stories of the men and women who read them, their struggles with hardship, and the place of religion in their lives.
Given the personal histories they contain, "every scripture in the Rare Bible Collection at MOBIA has its own unique story," said the New York museum's executive director, Ena Heller.
Efforts to supply Bibles to American troops began in the waning years of the American Revolution. Decades later, in 1817, the one-year-old American Bible Society began supplying Bibles to the crew of the frigate USS John Adams.
Eventually, the society became the most prominent, though not the sole, distributor of Bibles to members of the U.S. military. While most of the Bibles have been intended for Protestants, Catholic versions, as well as Jewish Scriptures, have also been provided.
An early challenge was distributing Bibles during the Civil War. The New York-based American Bible Society opted to supply Bibles to both sides of the conflict, but distributing them to Confederate troops proved daunting. Some were intercepted as contraband by Union forces.
During World War I, General John J. Pershing and President Woodrow Wilson penned messages that accompanied a 1917 copy of the New Testament. In his preface, Wilson, a Presbyterian elder, declared that "the Bible is the word of life" and urged soldiers to read the Scriptures and "find this out for yourselves."
READ MORE
But the Museum of Biblical Art's exhibition, "Finding Comfort in Difficult Times: A Selection of Soldiers' Bibles," is American religious history come alive.
The exhibit showcases three dozen copies of Scriptures published for members of the U.S. Armed Forces from the Civil War onward, from leather-bound, 19th-century copies to contemporary Bibles clothed in camouflage.
But more than the Bibles themselves -- on long-term loan from the American Bible Society -- the exhibit tells the stories of the men and women who read them, their struggles with hardship, and the place of religion in their lives.
Given the personal histories they contain, "every scripture in the Rare Bible Collection at MOBIA has its own unique story," said the New York museum's executive director, Ena Heller.
Efforts to supply Bibles to American troops began in the waning years of the American Revolution. Decades later, in 1817, the one-year-old American Bible Society began supplying Bibles to the crew of the frigate USS John Adams.
Eventually, the society became the most prominent, though not the sole, distributor of Bibles to members of the U.S. military. While most of the Bibles have been intended for Protestants, Catholic versions, as well as Jewish Scriptures, have also been provided.
An early challenge was distributing Bibles during the Civil War. The New York-based American Bible Society opted to supply Bibles to both sides of the conflict, but distributing them to Confederate troops proved daunting. Some were intercepted as contraband by Union forces.
During World War I, General John J. Pershing and President Woodrow Wilson penned messages that accompanied a 1917 copy of the New Testament. In his preface, Wilson, a Presbyterian elder, declared that "the Bible is the word of life" and urged soldiers to read the Scriptures and "find this out for yourselves."
READ MORE
SAY WHAT?! Mein Kampf Is Being Republished in Germany!
By letting the decades-old ban lapse, democratic Germany is further defanging a once dangerous book.
Now, Germany is taking a new step toward what is often called "normalization." The state of Bavaria has announced that in 2015 it will publish Hitler's Mein Kampf, which first appeared in 1925. A second volume was issued in 1926. The book was written in Landsberg prison, where Hitler was incarcerated after his failed putsch in 1923.
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Hitler's autobiography and other Nazi writings seized in part of a 1960 West Berlin police raid AP
It was widely noted during the contretemps over the novelist
Gunter Grass's recent effusions about Israel being a threat to world
peace that a divide emerged in Germany. On the one side were the
intellectual and political elites that condemned his comments. On the
other side was the public, which tended to sympathize with Grass and
complain about a "cudgel" being wielded to silence debate about the
German past.Now, Germany is taking a new step toward what is often called "normalization." The state of Bavaria has announced that in 2015 it will publish Hitler's Mein Kampf, which first appeared in 1925. A second volume was issued in 1926. The book was written in Landsberg prison, where Hitler was incarcerated after his failed putsch in 1923.
READ MORE
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