Friday, October 19, 2012
50 Women You Should Know
Christian women who want to
pursue influential roles in politics, the church, and other sectors of
public life in the United States and Canada have never before had more
opportunities to do so. As the following profiles in our cover package
show, they are taking advantage of those opportunities in spades. It's
not just a golden moment for Christian women, of course, but for the
entire church, as we benefit from the fruit of their manifold gifts.
Not that long ago, this cover package would have been inconceivable.
But that isn't to say that Christian women had no influence in church
and society before 2012. It was women who formed the Philadelphia Female
Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Harriet Tubman, a Christian who escaped
slavery, went on to lead an influential movement within the Underground
Railroad.
Methodist Frances Willard led two million members worldwide in the
temperance movement more than a century ago, influencing many to support
women's suffrage as a "weapon of protection to her home and tempted
loved ones from the tyranny of drink." The movement also started
kindergartens, passed child labor laws, and in the 1870s created the
first daycares for the children of working women.
Today evangelicalism continues to feel the effects of women's
leadership. In the 1940s and '50s, Henrietta Mears, a dynamic Christian
educator, shaped the church's future in powerful ways, discipling a
number of future evangelical leaders, including Bill Bright, founder of
Campus Crusade for Christ.
Women writers have played a particularly important role in evangelicalism. Rosalind Rinker's Prayer: Conversing with God
changed the way evangelicals prayed together. Before Rinker, many
believed that prayer should be in the King's English, spoken formally,
as if addressing a monarch. The idea that Christians could talk to God
as a friend, conversationally, was Rinker's radical idea that is now
commonplace.
Tensions remain—and in some ways are exacerbated—as women pursue
leadership in many spheres. Denominations and particular churches
continue to argue about the appropriate role of women—whether they can
teach men or be ordained, for example. Others debate how to best
understand Scripture's description of the role of women in marriage.
Some raise concerns that by recognizing women who find a voice in the
public sphere, we may be subtly denigrating the work of stay-at-home
mothers. (This would be true only if one believed that public work was
intrinsically more valuable than private, which would be hard to defend
if one really believes the meek are blessed.)
In some key respects, though, the distinction between public and
private, between professional career and mothering, is being blurred.
Many stay-at-home moms have become publicly influential as they blog
from their farmhouses, tweet from grocery stores, or phone in a
conference call while watching a 2-year-old.
Sex Slaves: A prison with chains we can’t see
I didn’t recognize the email address but I could tell it wasn’t spam.
Several paragraphs quickly explained the unusual request. She’d gotten
my contact info from a friend of a friend. Isn’t that how it works? Just
enough of a connection that I was compelled to respond. But her words
had already shattered my shallow world.
At 14, Tina ran away from home. She had to. Her mom was a druggie and Tina was pretty much on her own anyway. She hated life at home. When her mom combined booze and drugs she’d pass out but the men she brought home didn’t. To those deadbeats, Tina was always the next in line. So she split.
Tina’s face never made it to a missing child poster, because her mom never bothered to report her missing. For Tina, life’s realities hit quickly without a place to go and food to eat. She hitchhiked to the city thinking it would get easier. Little did she know she’d walked into a prison that she wouldn’t escape for ten years.
A seemingly nice man picked her up off the street, offered dinner and a room in a rather shabby apartment. With nowhere else to go, Tina gladly accepted. Soon her nightmare began. The details Tina provided are not ones anyone should have to read, much less ever be forced to live out. She’d become a sex slave.
READ MORE
At 14, Tina ran away from home. She had to. Her mom was a druggie and Tina was pretty much on her own anyway. She hated life at home. When her mom combined booze and drugs she’d pass out but the men she brought home didn’t. To those deadbeats, Tina was always the next in line. So she split.
Tina’s face never made it to a missing child poster, because her mom never bothered to report her missing. For Tina, life’s realities hit quickly without a place to go and food to eat. She hitchhiked to the city thinking it would get easier. Little did she know she’d walked into a prison that she wouldn’t escape for ten years.
A seemingly nice man picked her up off the street, offered dinner and a room in a rather shabby apartment. With nowhere else to go, Tina gladly accepted. Soon her nightmare began. The details Tina provided are not ones anyone should have to read, much less ever be forced to live out. She’d become a sex slave.
READ MORE
What Some Teens Don't Want You to See
It may not rot your teeth or send you out on secret late-night
trips to purchase baggies full of some illegal substance, but porn
addiction is a train wreck waiting to happen. And it looks like it's a
bigger problem for kids than we may want to admit.
I recently stumbled on an ABC Nightline report
that aired earlier this year. It centers on a 17-year-old named Nathan
Haug from Utah who just happens to look and act like an all-American
kid. He has great grades, a great attitude and a great family. The only
problem is, he's been secretly hooked on porn for years. This average,
clean-cut kid covered up his tracks on the family computer and even
honed his naked pic searches to a measured science to keep his parents
off the scent. But here's the thing that got me: He's been at it since
he was twelve.
We
parents may be cringing at the thought of our sweet kids dabbling in
that junk. But it's pretty obvious that Nathan's situation is really
pretty common. There's a growing number of studies—like one from the
University of New Hampshire called "The Nature and Dynamics of Internet Pornography Exposure for Youth"—that
seem to suggest that kids often stumble onto this stuff and get hooked
as young as 8 years old. The New Hampshire study found that 93.2 percent
of its boy participants and 62.1 percent of its girls had been exposed
to pornography, often well before they turned 18.
READ MORE
Shaming sex customers effective against trafficking
A California advocate against human trafficking says the method of shaming men who buy sex is a helpful tool to fight against traffickers.
Men who purchase sex services may now see their faces on the Internet or in a newspaper. The method of shaming nameless "Johns" is a tool for fighting sex trafficking that is being adopted across the country. In California, the website "Operation Reveal" posts photos of suspects; while in Oklahoma, "JohnTV" reels through possible sex customers.
Daphne Phung is the executive director of California Against Slavery. She says that while it may be somewhat unorthodox, this method does have success.
Rare Bible Display Now at Creation Museum
new exhibit featuring a small selection of items from the Passages exhibit
is currently under construction in the Palm Plaza area of the Creation
Museum. The collection, which is sponsored by the Hobby Lobby chain of
arts and crafts stores, features some of the manuscripts from the Green Collection.
The entire Green Collection is made up of more than 30,000 artifacts, including cuneiform tablets, Dead Sea Scrolls, unpublished papyri, and rare illuminated manuscripts. Additionally, the collection contains parts of the Gutenberg Bible, the Wycliffe Bible, and even tracts and Bibles of Martin Luther. For more information about the Passages touring exhibit, as well as the Bible museum that will open in Washington DC as a permanent home for the Green Collection, visit www.explorepassages.com. We are thrilled to be able to exhibit a small selection of some of these items at the Creation Museum.
READ MORE
The entire Green Collection is made up of more than 30,000 artifacts, including cuneiform tablets, Dead Sea Scrolls, unpublished papyri, and rare illuminated manuscripts. Additionally, the collection contains parts of the Gutenberg Bible, the Wycliffe Bible, and even tracts and Bibles of Martin Luther. For more information about the Passages touring exhibit, as well as the Bible museum that will open in Washington DC as a permanent home for the Green Collection, visit www.explorepassages.com. We are thrilled to be able to exhibit a small selection of some of these items at the Creation Museum.
READ MORE
Fox News’ Brit Hume Discusses His Christian Faith & ‘Seeing the Face of God’ After His Son’s Tragic Suicide
Fox News’ Brit Hume is known for his pointed and robust political analysis. But in a recent interview with CBN News chief political correspondent David Brody,
the well-known journalist and commentator also spoke candidly about his
Christian faith and the pain surrounding his son’s 1998 suicide.
Hume told Brody that, throughout his adult life, he gave very little thought to God and his faith. But the untimely death of his son caused that to change radically. Looking back on the painful period in his life, the Fox News analyst said that he quickly realized that many of the events that happened could only be explained as being God-ordained.
“When my son died in 1998, you know, when something shattering like that happens, I think it’s likely to be moment or can well be a moment where you find out what you really believe, and as horrible as that was, and it was bad, and it was heartbreaking and it was unexpected and it was very painful, I had the feeling through it all, that God was there,” he told Brody. “That He would rescue me from grief and pain, and that, I would get through it, and I knew I believed, and I knew it with enormous force.”
READ MORE
Hume told Brody that, throughout his adult life, he gave very little thought to God and his faith. But the untimely death of his son caused that to change radically. Looking back on the painful period in his life, the Fox News analyst said that he quickly realized that many of the events that happened could only be explained as being God-ordained.
“When my son died in 1998, you know, when something shattering like that happens, I think it’s likely to be moment or can well be a moment where you find out what you really believe, and as horrible as that was, and it was bad, and it was heartbreaking and it was unexpected and it was very painful, I had the feeling through it all, that God was there,” he told Brody. “That He would rescue me from grief and pain, and that, I would get through it, and I knew I believed, and I knew it with enormous force.”
READ MORE
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