Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Church Family Shaves Head, Raises Funds For Boy Attacked by Pit Bull
ROCK HILL After learning that a pit bull mauled and tore off a part of his best friend’s scalp, Jacob Ray made a decision both his parents called “drastic” – he had three inches of his long blond hair shaved off.
In honor of 11-year-old Kenny Allen, Jacob, 8, and his brothers, Seth, 10, and Daniel, 5, asked their parents if they could shave their heads to show support for the friend they all call “little Kenny.”
Last Wednesday, little Kenny was mauled by a 2-year-old pit bull named Dallas. The dog latched its teeth onto the back of Kenny’s head, tearing off a part of his scalp that doctors were unable to reattach.
Now, Kenny will face years of intensive reconstructive skin grafting. His head had to be shaved for a six-hour surgery. A vacuum attaches to the top of his head to suction excess blood and skin while he lies in a hospital bed in “good spirits,” his father said Sunday.
On the night of the accident, Pastor Craig Ray of Faith Family Christian Center was preparing to start the service. That’s when his wife, Angela Ray, received a text message about Kenny.
“We didn’t know the severity” of the attack, Ray said.
Instantly, church members began praying for Kenny. After the service, they rushed to the hospital, where they saw just how much damage was done.
“All I could imagine was my own child,” Ray said. “As a dad, the heartbreak of what Kenneth (Allen) was going through” was .
Without delay, members of the church turned a festival meant to raise funds for a mission trip to Ecuador into a fundraiser for Kenny. People showed up at the church on Homestead Road in droves, Ray said, some of them “pouring” money into donation buckets.
“It’s humbling to see the love of the community support little Kenny,” Ray said before church started Sunday. “I’m excited that the community still shows love.”
On Saturday, the church held a festival to raise money for Kenny. If $1,000 was raised, Pastor Ray agreed to have his head shaved.
By Sunday morning, the church had raised more than $2,100.
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DEMS Losing "Church" Voters?
WASHINGTON (The Blaze/AP) — Is Barack Obama losing support among America’s faithful? In 2008, the historic candidate took aim at the “pew gap,” the overwhelming Republican edge among voters who regularly attend church.
The Democratic presidential nominee came nowhere near closing it, but he didn’t have to. He just needed an extra percentage point or two among traditional GOP constituents, and he got it.
The Democratic National Committee is promising a repeat performance in 2012. But some religious leaders and scholars who backed Obama in 2008 are skeptical. They say the Democrats have, through neglect and lack of focus, squandered the substantial gains they made with religious moderates and worry it will hurt Obama in a tight race against Republican Mitt Romney.
(Related: Obama Does Damage Control Among Christian Pastors Following Gay Marriage Endorsement)
The DNC’s faith outreach director, the Rev. Derrick Harkins, said the party has strong relationships with religious groups. But as evidence of their concerns, critics point to the public debate that followed Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage, a decision the president said was based in part on his Christian faith.
No prominent clergyperson was sent out as a surrogate by the administration to explain the religious argument in favor of same-sex relationships. Instead, the main religious voices connected to Obama in the public sphere were the ministers who serve as his personal spiritual advisers and generally oppose gay marriage. Those ministers who were willing to comment — many weren’t — said they were struggling with Obama’s decision.
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Professor Receives Death Threats & Loses Her Adjunct Position After Complaining About Christian Crosses
It’s a widely-known fact that adjuncts are generally hired on a semester-by-semester basis. This essentially means that colleges and universities are free to let these part-time employees go at any time they so choose. But Sissy Bradford, an ex-professor at Texas A&M University at San Antonio is speaking out about her employer’s decision not to ask her back following a controversy over Christian crosses on campus.
Inside Higher Ed has more about the controversy and the events that comprise it:
In the fall, Sissy Bradford took a public stand — unpopular with many in San Antonio — about separation of church and state. She was briefly in the news and her view prevailed. Since then, she has received e-mail threats because of her stance. This month, she told the story of those threats to the alt-weekly in San Antonio, which ran an article about them. And the day the article came out, Texas A&M University at San Antonio told her that she would not be teaching in the fall, despite her having previously been assigned four courses.
Bradford teaches criminology at the university; she has strong student evaluations (which she shared with Inside Higher Ed) and she has been honored for her teaching. She became a public figure when she complained about crosses that had been installed on a tower that was part of the entrance to the campus. The crosses were put there by a developer, not the university, but Bradford maintained that they were inappropriate for the entrance to a public university campus. Americans United for Separation of Church and State backed her — and after that organization sent a series of letters to San Antonio and university officials, the developer removed the crosses. That was in November.
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