Posts

Churches Now Fearing Lawsuits Over Bans on Homosexual Marriage

/6 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Eusebius@CommonsJoe Carr believes a day is fast approaching when pastors will be charged with hate crimes for preaching that homosexuality is a sin and churches will face lawsuits for refusing to host same-sex weddings.

“It’s just a matter of time,” said Carr, the pastor of Waynesville Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia. “What’s happening in Europe – we’re going to see happen here and we’re going to see it happen sooner rather than later I’m afraid.”

And that’s why the congregation will be voting next month to change their church bylaws – to officially ban the usage of their facilities for gay marriages.

“We needed to have a clear statement,” Carr told Fox News. “It’s to protect us from being forced to allow someone to use our facilities who does not believe what we believe the Bible teaches.”

“These facilities may only be used for weddings that adhere to the Biblical definition of marriage and are solely reserved for use by members and their immediate family members,” the amended bylaws read. “These facilities may not be used by any individual, group, or organization that advocate, endorse, or promote homosexuality as an alternative or acceptable lifestyle. This policy also applies to birthday parties, reunions, anniversaries, wedding or baby showers, etc.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Huckabee: Churches Should Consider Dropping Tax-Exempt Status

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Churches should consider giving up their tax-exempt status if keeping it means allowing the government to tell them what to say, says Mike Huckabee.

The former Arkansas governor, GOP presidential candidate, and current Fox News talk show host also is an ordained Baptist minister. He made the comment on Monday during a minister’s conference in Houston, Texas, ahead of the annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting.

“Keep your deductions. Keep the exemptions. We stand more faithful with what God would have us to say, and we choose our freedom more than our financial benefit,” Huckabee said, according to Associated Baptist Press.

Recent revelations that the Internal Revenue Service has been targeting groups that are conservative and pro-Israel should be an alert to people of faith, Huckabee said. The Thomas More Society has complained that IRS officials asked anti-abortion groups in Texas and Iowa about the content of their prayers when the groups sought tax-exempt status.

“You may not clap real loud for this, but at least hear me out and think about it and pray about it,” Huckabee told the pastors. “I think we need to recognize that it may be time to quit worrying so much about the tax code and start thinking more about the truth of the living God.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Will the Last Religious Politician Please Turn Out the Lights?

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: istolethetvIf at one time being a member of a church was almost a requirement for anyone running for office, that time has long since passed. These days, portraying a candidate as a “fine, upstanding Christian” is enough to send any potential office seeker to the political graveyard. Due to constant stereotyping by liberals, such a description now conjures an image that is a combination of Boss Hogg, Huey Long, and Elmer Gantry.

The result, among others, is that the openly Christian candidate is out of favor with the political establishment here and abroad.

Across the pond in England, antagonism toward those who are churched and who openly express their religious beliefs has long prevailed. According to “Erasmus” a columnist for The Economist, Margaret Thatcher may well have been the “last British prime minister openly and emphatically to acknowledge the influence of Christianity on her thinking, in particular terms not fuzzy ones. […] In her religious origins, she was informed by a passion that was foreign to the English establishment.”
Erasmus goes on to explain that openly professed religious sensibilities evoke such revulsion from the British establishment that former Prime Minister Tony Blair experienced a great deal of pressure to keep his faith to himself: “Tony Blair is passionately religious but was famously discouraged by his advisors from ‘doing God’ in public because of the fear he might sound nutty. ”

The feelings of revulsion toward “nutty” people of faith certainly have not been confined to Britain. Most Western establishments, political or otherwise, are hostile toward openly Christian politicians, reserving their most vicious attacks for those who frankly profess their faith in Christ. In America, the vice presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin, to whom liberals assigned the perspicacity of Elmer Fudd, was a prime example of how worked up leftist wolf PACs become at the prospect of a conservative Christian running for high office.

When did the political tide turn against Christians and other people of faith?

Read more from this story HERE.

Greg Laurie to Homosexual Activists: ‘I Won’t Back Down’

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Harvest MinistriesA California megachurch pastor involved in the National Day of Prayer who has recently come under fire for his views on homosexuality has declared that he will not be intimidated.

At a prayer event held Wednesday morning at the Washington, D.C., office of the Family Research Council, Pastor Greg Laurie told those gathered, “I won’t back down.”

“They do not want me to pray. They describe me as ‘homophobic’ and so forth. How can you deal with such a situation? We’re in a time in our country now where I’m attacked because I believe what the Bible teaches,” said Laurie, ahead of Thursday’s National Day of Prayer.

“If people want to make it all about that I’m not going to back down. In the immortal words of the great theologian Tom Petty, ‘I won’t back down,’ I won’t. I’m not going to apologize.”

Laurie paralleled the efforts of gay rights activists to that of the palace officials who sought to stop Daniel (in the Old Testament) from praying and passed a law that resulted in him being thrown into the Lion’s Den.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Left's 'Crusade to Destroy the Christian Church'

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: BreitbartThe Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) has just been re-introduced in the Senate and specifically bans employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. The bill has been around for the last couple of decades and its new supporters (two Republicans and three Democrats) probably believe that polls showing movement in favor of same-sex marriage mean that the iron is hot for striking.

From what I can gather, ENDA will offer the LGBT workers the same federal protections against employer discrimination as there are now in the categories of age, race, gender, religion, and disability. As the bill is written now, it would exempt employers with fewer than 15 employees, religious institutions, and religious-affiliated employers, such as Presbyterian hospitals, Catholic adoption agencies, etc.

Let’s leave the debate over the overall bill for another time. The development I want to focus on is brand new. There is now a push underway to remove the exemption for religious-affiliated employers by no less than the ACLU and a number of LGBT legal organizations…

This harkens back to something I have been trying to sound the alarm over all year — that the goal here has nothing to do with gay rights and everything to do with the left’s ongoing crusade to destroy the Christian Church.

Read more from this story HERE.

Lawsuit Exposes NYC Church's Two Billion Dollar Assets

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Michael NagleThere has never been any doubt that Trinity Church is wealthy. But the extent of its wealth has long been a mystery; guessed at by many, known by few.

Now, however, after a lawsuit filed by a disenchanted parishioner, the church has offered an estimate of the value of its assets: more than $2 billion.

The Episcopal parish, known as Trinity Wall Street, traces its holdings to a gift of 215 acres of prime Manhattan farmland donated in 1705 by Queen Anne of England. Since then, the church has parlayed that gift into a rich portfolio of office buildings, stock investments and, soon, mixed-use residential development.

The parish’s good fortune has become an issue in the historic congregation, which has been racked by infighting in recent years over whether the church should be spending more money to help the poor and spread the faith, in New York and around the world. Differences over the parish’s mission and direction last year led nearly half the 22-member vestry — an august collection of corporate executives and philanthropists — to resign or be pushed out, after at least seven of them asked, unsuccessfully, that the rector himself step down.

Over the years, the church has sold or given away much of the original 215 acres from Queen Anne, but it has 14 acres, including 5.5 million square feet of commercial real estate.

Read more from this story HERE.

Report: Baccalaureate Speaker Uninvited From Morehouse College Because He Criticized Obama

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: NatalieMaynorThe Rev. Kevin Johnson, senior pastor of Bright Hope Baptist Church in North Philadelphia, was disinvited from speaking at Morehouse College because he wrote a newspaper column critical of President Obama’s administration, according to a group of alumni.

The college denied that Friday. Efforts to reach Johnson were unsuccessful.

The controversy erupted Friday afternoon when a group called Citizens for Change issued a news release that gave the following account:

Johnson, a Morehouse alumnus, had been chosen as this year’s baccalaureate speaker, to address the college community a day before Obama’s graduation visit and commencement speech May 19.

On April 15, it said, Morehouse president John Silvanus Wilson Jr. phoned Johnson to rescind the invitation, saying he was concerned about Johnson’s recent column in the Philadelphia Tribune that said there was a scarcity of African American appointees in Obama’s cabinet and a lack of policies to reduce poverty.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sen. Cruz: Obama Wants Power to Choose Ministers at Churches

/12 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) released a report documenting attempted abuses of federal power by the Obama administration on Tuesday, saying the administration “knows virtually no bounds.”

Cruz points to Obama’s own Supreme Court appointees, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, to make his case:

“When President Obama’s own Supreme Court nominees join their colleagues in unanimously rejecting the Administration’s call for broader federal power six times in just over one year, the inescapable conclusion is that the Obama Administration’s view of federal power knows virtually no bounds,” the senator’s report said.

The Obama administration’s over-reaching includes attempts to electronically track Americans without cause and deny churches the right to choose their own ministers…

In one case, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, the Justice Department argued it “had the right to oversee a church’s choosing of ministers,” which even Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan called “amazing.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Rush Limbaugh: Churches Could Be FORCED To Marry Gays

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

If the U.S. Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriages across America, then churches could be forced to perform homosexual weddings, even if they oppose the idea on religious grounds.

That’s according to radio host Rush Limbaugh, who thinks there’s a good chance of it happening.

“The Catholic Church can be forced to give away abortifacients and birth-control pills. Why can’t the Church be forced to marry gay couples who want the sacrament? Any church,” Limbaugh said on his top-rated program Wednesday afternoon.

“I think it’s a pretty safe bet that that kind of thing will happen. Among militant leftists, attacking organized religion is part of the political agenda, whether gay or not.”

Limbaugh continued: “If you had to roll the dice on it, you say, ‘Yeah that’ll be the next phase.’ When it becomes legal and a church refuses to do it, don’t go some place that will, sue the people that won’t. That’s just a political philosophy of people on the left.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Church Celebrates 2nd Amendment, Kids Make Pop-Tart Guns During Sunday School

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: Clash Daily

This past Sunday, a Chicago area church sponsored a Second Amendment Sunday filled with “assault” pop-tarts, “combat” cupcakes and a sheet-cake that featured a chocolate semi-automatic Glock handgun with a quote from Jesus that read “Blessed are the peacemakers.” John Kirkwood, Pastor of Grace-Gospel Fellowship in Bensenville Illinois said the idea came to him after reading a column by Doug Giles entitled “Christian Parents Should Have Their Kids Play With Toy Guns.”

“Giles has a way of exposing the absurdity of the left,” said Kirkwood, “his article was in response to some Pastor from St. Louis and his ‘toy gun’ buyback program. That and the news about 7 year olds getting suspended for threatening pop-tarts and menacing cupcakes led me to stand up for true American values and the Biblical wisdom that underlies them.” The Pastor, referring to two recent cases in which a pop-tart shaped like a handgun and cupcakes topped by plastic soldiers brought on what many felt was over-the-top school discipline, decided to respond in kind.

We had an ‘assault’ pop-tart challenge in our Jr. Church where each child who wanted to participate chewed a pop-tart into the shape of a gun and the top four would win prizes; in this case a toy gun,” said Kirkwood, “the guns were named for celebrities.”

“Second runner up received a double barrel shot-gun that we nicknamed ‘The Biden,’ and when we presented it we made sure to say what ‘not’ to do with it in a real situation. The prize for runner up was a Navy Seal sniper rifle that we named ‘The Chris Kyle’ in honor of the American Sniper. We felt that it was appropriate,” added Kirkwood, “given the insulting way that this administration ignored the death of this American hero, yet had the crust to send a delegation to the memorial service for Hugo Chavez.”

What was the top award? Kirkwood smiled and noted, “You know, I stood in the toy aisle for a good half an hour to choose just the right one and it turned out to be the biggest Nerf gun that I could find, and the kicker – the box was marked ‘semi-auto’ and ‘high capacity,’ so we named that one ‘the Feinstein.’”

Read more from this story HERE.