The Boy Scouts of America on Thursday ended its longstanding policy of forbidding openly gay youths to participate in its activities, a step its chief executive called “compassionate, caring and kind.”

The Book We Still Can’t Spare
Lars Walker, The American Spectator

Without the Bible, can there be democracy?

New Wave of Fetal-Pain Abortion Bans Faces Court Scrutiny
Melissa Steffan, Christianity Today

As abortion laws in states such as North Dakota, Alabama, Arkansas, and Kansas have become more restrictive, critics have taken the new “fetal pain” restrictions to court.

If King Solomon Gave a Commencement Address
Joe Carter, The Gospel Coalition

What would the world’s wisest man say to the Class of 2013?

The post Mere Links 05.24.13 appeared first on Mere Comments.

David Cameron’s plan to allow same-sex couples to marry has passed its final Commons hurdle despite an attempt by almost half of Conservative MPs to block the reform.

Diversity, not Jesus, saves says Presiding Bishop
George Conger, Anglican Ink

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church has denounced the Apostle Paul as mean-spirited and bigoted for having released a slave girl from demonic bondage as reported in Acts 16:16-34 .

Supreme Court Will Re-Examine Prayer at Government Meetings
Melissa Steffan, Christianity Today

New case could change 30-year-old ruling that permits the practice.

The New Birds and the Bees
Mark Regnerus, Public Discourse

Our language about sexuality is dominated by public health, with its talk of risk, “protection,” health, choice, and rights. In so doing we scoff at babies—the crowning glory of human creativity—and where they come from.

The post Mere Links 05.23.13 appeared first on Mere Comments.

Kermit Gosnell was not sentenced to life imprisonment for sloppiness, for insensitivity, for bad keepsakes, for a backed up drain, for fleas, or even for making women suffer. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering three babies.

Just Brilliant! Three Things Only a PhD Can Believe
Louis Markos, Salvo

At times, this academic groupthink leads PhDs to defend issues that are indefensible and to give their allegiance to causes that are immoral or unethical.

Vermont Becomes Third State to Legalize Assisted Suicide
Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com

With Governor Peter Shumlin’s signature on a bill the state legislature approved, Vermont today becomes the third state after Oregon and Washington to legalize assisted suicide.

Salvation by Technique
R.R. Reno, First Things

From the French Revolution onward we’ve entertained dreams of a single, profound, and decisive moment that will transform society, or even human nature itself.

The post Mere Links 05.21.13 appeared first on Mere Comments.

(Titles are for identification only.)

 

Bishop David C. Anderson, Sr.
President, American Anglican Council

Sara L. Anderson
Executive Vice President
Bristol House, Ltd. (United Methodist)

Randy Alcorn,
Director of Eternal Perspective Ministries

The Rev. Canon Phil Ashey
Chief Operating & Development Officer
American Anglican Council

Doug Beacham
Presiding Bishop, Int’l Pentecostal Holiness Church

Dr. Robert D. Benne (Lutheran)
Jordan Trexler Professor Emeritus
and Research Associate
Religion and Philosophy, Roanoke College

David K. Bernard
General Superintendent
United Pentecostal Church International

Dr. Robert H. Blackburn
Past Chairman, National Association of Covenanting Congregations

The Rev. John Bradosky, Bishop
The North American Lutheran Church

Rev. Dr. Gemechis Desta Buba
Assistant to the Bishop for Missions,
North American Lutheran Church

Galen Carey
National Association of Evangelicals

Pastor Mark C. Chavez
General Secretary, North American Lutheran Church

Nancy Clark
President, Evangelical Women Leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals

The Rev. Sue Cyre
Executive Director of Presbyterians for Faith, Family and Ministry (PFFM)

The Most Reverend Robert Duncan,
Archbishop, The Anglican Church in North America

Dr. Anthony Esolen, Providence College

Dr. Jim Garlow
Senior Pastor; Chairman, Renewing American Leadership

Pastor Matthew Harrison
President, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Doug Harvey, Executive Director
Disciple Heritage Fellowship

Rev. Charles Huckaby,
Dean, Western Classis of the Calvin Synod Conference United Church of Christ Term 2010 – 2013

Clyde M. Hughes
Bishop/General Overseer
International Pentecostal Church of Christ

Bishop Harry R. Jackson
Presiding of the International Communion of Evangelical Churches.

Dr. Jeffrey Jeremiah
Stated Clerk
Evangelical Presbyterian Church

Bishop David Kendall
The Free Methodist Church – USA

James M. Kushiner
Executive Director, The Fellowship of St. James

Dr. Richard Land
President
Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

John Lomperis
Director, United Methodist Action

Alex McFarland
Director for Christian Worldview and Apologetics
Senator Patricia Miller
Executive Director, Confessing Movement (United Methodist)

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Bob Morrison
Secretary, REVIVE! (Iowa United Methodist renewal)

Rev. Dr. Mary Holder Naegeli
Minister-at-Large, San Francisco Presbytery; Moderator of the Presbyterian Coalition

Thomas C. Oden
United Methodist theologian
Director, Center for Early African Christianity
Eastern University

Rev. William Owens Sr.
President, Coalition of African American Pastors

Dr. Eric Patterson
Dean, Robertson School of Government

Regent University”

Dr. Bob Phillips
Senior Pastor;
Encourager Church, Houston
Co-Founder, Kairos Journal

Leon J. Podles
President
Crossland Foundation

Dr. Steve Riggle
Senior Pastor; Grace Church, Houston
President, Grace International

 
Dr. Mark E. Roberts
Publisher, Word & Spirit Press (Pentecostal/Charismatic)
 

Bishop David Roller
The Free Methodist Church – USA

Rev. Kevin C. Rudolph
National Covenant Association of Churches
Windwood Presbyterian Church

Dr. Rick Scarborough
Founder and President, Vision America Action

The Rev. Dr. Frederick J. Schumacher
Executive Director, American Lutheran Publicity Bureau

Charles G. Scot
General Bishop of the Pentecostal Church of God

The Rev. W. Stevens Shipman
Director, Lutheran Coalition for Renewal

The Rev. Paul Stallsworth
President, Taskforce of United Methodists on Abortion and Sexuality

David M. Stanley
Director, Institute on Religion and Democracy
Chairman, United Methodist Action Steering Committee
Co-Chair, REVIVE! (Iowa United Methodist renewal)

John Stonestreet
Speaker and Author for Breakpoint and Summit Ministries

Bishop Ray Sutton
Ecumenical Officer, Anglican Church in North America

Eric Teetsel
Executive Director, Manhattan Declaration
 
Mark Tooley
President, Institute on Religion & Democracy

Bishop Matthew Thomas
The Free Methodist Church – USA
 

The Rev. Dr. David Wendel
Assistant to the Bishop for Ministry and Ecumenism
The North American Lutheran Church

Dr. Luder Whitlock, Jr.
Interim President of Knox Theological Seminary.

Mark Williams
General Overseer, Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee

Bishop Ronald Wilson
General Superintendent
Congregational Holiness Church

Dr. George O. Wood
General Superintendent
General Council of the Assemblies of God

The post Statement by Religious Leaders on Boy Scouts appeared first on Mere Comments.

Whenever discussions of the authority and reliability of the Bible arise, questions of history and historicity take center stage.

U.K.: Gay marriage could stop Christians becoming teachers or doctors – church leaders
John Bingham, The Telegraph

Hundreds of thousands of Christian young people will be put off becoming teachers, doctors, nurses or other public servants once gay marriage becomes law, a coalition of church leaders claims.

9 Things You Should Know About Human Cloning
Joe Carter, The Gospel Coalition

Earlier this week scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University reported they had produced embryonic stem cells from a cloned human embryo. Here are 9 things you should know about human cloning.

Complaints of IRS targeting by religious groups on the rise
Jordy Yager, The Hill

The number of religious groups reporting they were improperly targeted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is increasing.

The post Mere Links 05.20.13 appeared first on Mere Comments.

Consistent with the media and government animus against homeschoolers, a number of years ago, police in Muskegon, Michigan, conducted a mock attack on a school bus as part of a terrorism response exercise.  The terrorists were said to be fanatical homeschoolers.  However, the Muskegon Area Intermediate School District later apologized for characterizing homeschoolers as terrorists after hundreds of complaints were received.  In 2011, Pottawatamie County, Iowa, and Homeland Security conducted an exercise simulating a school shooting.  The shooter was portrayed as a “white teen boy, whose family is involved in anti-illegal immigration rallies” and supports the Second Amendment.  (Well, given the teen’s propensity for violence, he sure sounds like he was homeschooled!)

The stereotypes fostered by our government deliberately demonize homeschoolers as violent and dangerous.  For those of us who have had the privilege to know many homeschooled children, you are undoubtedly impressed with the fact that they are anything but violent and dangerous.  Rather, you will have noticed their courtesy, intelligence, work ethic, and ability to converse intelligently. Standardized test scores are far higher on average for homeschoolers than for those who have attended government schools.  Given that homeschoolers are academically, emotionally, and socially prepared to succeed at college, many colleges and universities actively recruit and admit homeschoolers.  (For example, Covenant College, a Christian college in Georgia, presently has 23% of its student body come from homeschool backgrounds.)  Thus, in spite of the troubling and insidious government propaganda that compares homeschoolers to violent terrorists, we should encourage homeschoolers, their parents, and their freedom-loving supporters to combat this massive governmental brainwashing effort that seeks to eradicate parent-directed education.  Homeschoolers and their parents are targeted by the Obama Administration because they pose a threat to the government’s monopoly for indoctrination and social engineering.  In the Obama Administration’s legal briefs against the Romeikes, Eric Holder’s Department of Justice argued that homeschooling is not a parent’s “fundamental right,” which is in direct opposition to prior decisions of the Supreme Court.  And we haven’t even spoken about what the Obama Administration is planning with the “Common Core” curriculum.  More about that soon!

The post Homeschoolers Seen as Threat to the Nation appeared first on Mere Comments.

IRS officials refused to grant tax exempt status to two pro-life organizations because of their position on the abortion issue, according to a non-profit law firm, which said that one group was pressured not to protest a pro-choice organization that endorsed President Obama during the last election.

The Precarious Position of Christians in the Holy Land
Mathew Block, First Things

Recent news that Christians (including clergy and foreign diplomats) were attacked by Israeli police as they attempted to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre the day before Orthodox Easter stands as a stark reminder of the difficulties Christians face in the Holy Land.

Blasphemy Charges Becoming New Weapon Against Egyptian Christians
Morning Star News

According to a new study, blasphemy and evangelizing accusations are disproportionately used against members of Egypt’s Christian minority—especially those working in education.

UK: Christianity declining 50% faster than thought – as one in 10 under-25s is a Muslim
John Bingham, The Telegraph

A new analysis of the 2011 census shows that a decade of mass immigration helped mask the scale of decline in Christian affiliation among the British-born population – while driving a dramatic increase in Islam, particularly among the young.

The post Mere Links 05.17.13 appeared first on Mere Comments.

But the joint letter, which announced a “resolution agreement” with the university, didn’t stop there. It then proceeded to rewrite the federal government’s rules about sexual harassment and free speech on campus.

Lukianoff is President of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education). He writes:

The implications for professors and students are enormous. An unsuccessful request for a date, or even assigning a potentially offensive book like “Lolita,” could now be construed as harassment. As attorney and civil libertarian Wendy Kaminer commented on The Atlantic’s website this week: “The stated goal of this policy is stemming discrimination, but the inevitable result will be advancing it, in the form of content-based prohibitions on speech.”

It seems there is a growing “right not to be offended.” Also, students in some cases may be punished before guilt or innocence is even determined!

Lukianoff is also the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate. And an atheist. His book is the subject of an article by Les Sillars, Professor of Journalism at Patrick Henry College in Virginia. The article is “Lukianoff’s Ashes: What a Candid Postmodernist Might Do to an Atheist’s Book Exposing Campus Censorship.” Sillars takes us to a campus book burning where Lukianoff is denounced by the Vice President of the Office of Intellectual Diversity. (Should Lukianoff now watch out for the IRS?)

“Lukianoff”s Ashes” will be published in the next issue of Salvo Magazine, which goes to press Monday. (You may subscribe here.)

The post Big Fed & Speech on Campus: A Salvo appeared first on Mere Comments.

However, while this meeting was depicted as the first meeting between Mr. Weinstein and Pentagon brass, The New York Times (“NYT”) reported on March 1, 2009, in a story entitled “Questions Raised Anew About Religion in Military,” (available here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/washington/01church.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& ), that Mr. Weinstein first met with four-star general and Air Force chief of staff, Norton A. Schwartz, in February 2009, mere weeks after President Obama’s inauguration.  This was the first time that Mr. Weinstein and MRFF had an official meeting with a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  During President Bush’s presidency, Mr. Weinstein’s MRFF sued the Defense Department as part of his anti-Christian crusade, so President Obama political appointees and the sycophantic generals at the Pentagon knew exactly who Mr. Weinstein was, and what he wanted to do, when General Schwartz met with him in 2009.  The NYT story gives a laundry list of Weinstein and MRFF’s grievances against the Defense Department during the Bush administration, including a “ceremony that began and ended with a Christian prayer…the appearance of uniformed officers at religious events, [and] displays of crucifixes at military chapels…”    For their average NYT readers, the story indicated that “Christian prayers” are prayers that are offered “in Jesus’ name.”  (You sure didn’t need to explain that to readers in either Dallas or South Carolina.)  In any event, while the Bush Defense Department fought Mr. Weinstein and MRFF in court, President Obama and Secretary Hagel welcomed him again on Apr. 23, 2013, to discuss how to stop seditious and treasonous Christian evangelization (oops, I meant Christian proselytization) within the military, a distinction that may seem to be without a difference.

However, as a public service to our nation’s military personnel, Mere Comments offers to clarify the difference between Christian evangelism (which is still permitted speech and conduct) and proselytization (which is now prohibited speech and conduct).  Thus, military personnel are legally permitted to say, “Have you made the wonderful discovery of receiving Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” and “Have you ever considered the claims of Jesus Christ on your life?”  However, military personnel are not permitted to say, “Hey Soldier, your life is all messed up!  You had better get right with Jesus Christ, Who loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?”  Further soldiers will no longer be permitted to say, “Hey, Soldier, you want to come to the base chapel with me this coming Sunday morning?”  Notice the clear and distinct difference between the two sets of statements: prohibited statements use the term, “Hey, Soldier,” but permitted statements do not.  Clear, right?

The post The Difference Between Evangelization and Proselytization appeared first on Mere Comments.

Manufacturing doubts about the Big Bang
http://tbsblog.thebestschools.org/2013/05/09/manufacturing-doubts-about-the-big-bang/

The Big Bang: Fireworks still on despite downpour?
http://tbsblog.thebestschools.org/2013/05/08/the-big-bang-fireworks-still-on-despite-downpour/

Still under construction: A No Big Bang Universe
http://tbsblog.thebestschools.org/2013/05/08/under-construction-a-no-big-bang-universe/

The “I hate the Big Bang” Cosmology Club
http://tbsblog.thebestschools.org/2013/05/08/some-five-star-members-of-the-i-hate-the-big-bang-cosmology-club/

Hence, Multiverses are now the rage. So Christians are medieval and unscientific for believing in some heaven beyond our world, but scientists can state with a straight face that there are billions of universes–only we just can’t ever see them? Or (the latest) that Nothing existed, and then Nothing spit out our universe? Nothing? May favorite, though, if that there is an infinite number of universes from which ours happily came into being. So an atheist posits that something Infinite had to cause our world? Well, it’s not much, but maybe that’s a step in the right direction…..

The post Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bang? appeared first on Mere Comments.