OrthodoxNet.com Blog

FrontPageMag | Mark D. Tooley | July 14, 2008

Officials of the declining 4.9 million Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have revealed what God’s priorities are in the U.S. presidential campaign. And remarkably, the divine priorities was very akin to the Democratic Party’s priorities, if not further to the left.

Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, with three other ELCA officials generously wrote both presidential candidates a public letter with the divine guidance. Although famed Protestant Reformer Martin Luther championed the Bible as God’s exclusive revelation, modern ELCA activists have located more useful counsel in the secular welfare state and environmental agenda. Continue Reading »

Touchestone | Russell D. Moore | July/August 2008

For months, Barack Obama’s pastor lit up the radio and television airwaves with his comments on conspiracy theories about American “state-sponsored terrorism,” his call on God to damn America, his belief that the September 11 terrorist attacks were simply America’s “chickens coming home to roost.”

Some of the talking heads discussed Jeremiah Wright as though his kind of rhetoric were essential to the African-American church, a claim that is patently untrue, and easily verifiable as such. Others seemed to assume that his style of ministry was unique. The truth is, Jeremiah Wright’s name is Legion, and you are just as likely to hear his kind of preaching in a white congregation as in a black one. Continue Reading »

American Thinker | Lee Cary | Jun 26, 2008

In his confrontation with James Dobson, Senator Obama faces a degree of absolutism that pales in belligerent intensity compared to what he could, as President, face from America’s most hostile adversaries. His response to Dobson is a clue to how he might deal with Ahmadinejad, Chavez, et al.

It’s no secret that the Obama Campaign is executing a plan to woo evangelical voters coordinated by Joshua DuBois, the National Director of Religious Affairs. DuBois, a member of a United Pentecostal Council Assemblies of God church in Cambridge, Mass., was a graduate student at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School when he was “enthralled” by Obama’s reference to faith issues in his 2004 Democratic Convention speech. He volunteered to help Obama get elected president. Continue Reading »

FrontPageMag | Mark D. Tooley | Jun. 9, 2008

Left-wing evangelist Tony Campolo, one of Bill Clinton’s post-Monica counselors, has declared that America’s ostensibly aggressive war policies against Muslims are inhibiting the spread of the Gospel. And he rather uncharitably lambasted American evangelicals who do not share his leftist perspective as “jingoistic” and motivated by oil “lust.” Continue Reading »

FrontPageMagazine | Jamie Glazov | Nov. 7, 2007

So, un-belief works for liberal Democrats. Here’s a statistical fact: The greater the number of people who do not believe in God, the greater the number of votes for liberal Democrats. I suppose Al Gore might call that a triumph of reason.

The problem for most of these liberal politicians is that they run for office in America and not in France. They would do extremely well among the socialist, unbelieving populations of Europe. [...]

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The Jewish Daily Forward | David Klinghoffer | Wed. Oct 17, 2007

The Disputation

In a strange irony, it has come to be the case that only Democrats now speak up for giving a role to faith in governance. Stranger still, they get away with it — which prompts the question: Why?

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Wall Street Opinion Journal | John Schmalzbauer | October 18, 2007

A look at the evangelical power elite.

Once upon a time, a Protestant elite ruled America. Its members were not just any Protestants, though. They came almost exclusively from the “main line,” a phrase borrowed from the affluent suburbs lining the Pennsylvania Railroad west of Philadelphia. Mainline Protestantism–encompassing the Episcopal Church, the Congregationalists and other liberal denominations–was far more than a cluster of churches. According to the historian William Hutchison, it “was a personal network” comprising “familial, social, and old-school-tie relationships,” including such clans as the Rockefellers and the Niebuhrs. It helped to build such progressive institutions as the University of Chicago and Union Theological Seminary. It was also capable of great bigotry, barring Catholics and Jews from its social clubs and law firms.

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Ed. (Banescu) Yet another Christian church deviates from the Gospel.

Reuters | August 11, 2007

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Homosexual Lutheran clergy who are in sexual relationships will be able to serve as pastors, the largest U.S. Lutheran body said on Saturday.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) passed a resolution at its annual assembly urging bishops to refrain from disciplining pastors who are in “faithful committed same-gender relationships.”

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Religion and Liberty | Spring 2007

Arthur C. Brooks, the author of Who Really Cares (Basic Books, 2006), is a professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Public Affairs and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Reviewing the book in The Wall Street Journal, Wilfred McClay wrote: “Mr. Brooks concludes that four distinct forces appear to have primary responsibility for making people behave charitably: religion, skepticism about the government’s role in economic life, strong families and personal entrepreneurship.” Brooks took time recently to speak with Religion & Liberty managing editor David Michael Phelps.

. . . more

Washington Times | Julia Duin | July 9, 2007

The love of money doesn’t have to be the root of all evil, according to several organizations active in “values investing.”

The search for stocks and mutual funds known for religious virtue as well as financial vitality has shot up in recent years with a proliferation of evangelical Protestant, Catholic and Muslim investment companies.

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CNSNews.com | Nathan Burchfiel | June 26, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - For what is believed to be the first time in its history, the U.S. Senate will on July 12 be opened with a Hindu prayer, the Senate Chaplain’s Office confirmed Monday.

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Virtue Online | David Virtue | June 18, 2007

First came the irregular ordination of women to the priesthood, and then homosexual behavior was deemed acceptable including the ordination and consecration of an openly avowed homosexual to the episcopacy, concomitantly with same sex blessings for all. The elastic band of The Episcopal Church’s theology has been stretched to its limit with the announcement that the Rev. Dr. Ann Holmes Redding, an Episcopal priest and theologian in the Diocese of Olympia, has become a practicing Muslim.

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Christian Science Monitor | Linda Feldmann | June 6, 2007

Democratic presidential candidates are speaking openly about faith, competing for ‘values voters.’

Washington - John Edwards spoke about how prayer helped him get through the death of his son and his wife’s cancer diagnoses. Barack Obama repeatedly invoked the biblical phrase “I am my brother’s keeper” as he spoke about poverty and injustice. Hillary Rodham Clinton credited her faith with getting her through her husband’s infidelities.

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Human Life International | May 17, 2007

FRONT ROYAL, VA — The Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, STL, president of Human Life International, (HLI) today said “Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (CT-3) and seventeen other members of Congress who describe themselves as Catholic not only are ignorant of their faith but also need a civics lesson.”

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New York Times | Sewell Chan | May 7, 2007

You could tell from the background music that played beforehand – alternating recordings of James Brown and Gregorian chant – that this was going to be an unusual debate.
The question under debate (“Is God great?”) and the speakers — two men who are often depicted in harsh caricatures by their critics — might have caused some to expect something like a circus. Perhaps surprisingly, it turned out to be the public intellectual event of the evening, a bit like Bertrand Russell vs. C. S. Lewis.

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Wall Street Opinion Journal | Joseph Loconte | May 11, 2007

The legacy of the “Social Gospel”–100 years later.

Within a few years of its publication in 1907, “Christianity and the Social Crisis” swept through America’s Protestant churches like a nor’easter, selling more than 50,000 copies to ministers and laypeople alike. In an age of social upheaval, Walter Rauschenbusch’s jeremiad was meant to rouse the church from its pietistic slumber. “If society continues to disintegrate and decay, the Church will be carried down with it,” he warned. “If the Church can rally such moral forces that injustice will be overcome . . . it will itself rise to higher liberty and life.”

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Townhall.com | Ken Connor | May 6, 2007

For quite some time in America, frank public discussions about candidates’ religious views have been deemed verboten. The trend began in 1960, when John F. Kennedy found that his Catholic faith was proving to be a liability with Protestant voters. Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic to run for president since Al Smith’s landslide defeat in the 1920s, and throughout the campaign he met significant resistance from detractors who were deeply suspicious of the Catholic faith. Hundreds of anti-Catholic tracts were sent to millions of homes across America discouraging voters from supporting Kennedy. Many refused to vote for the young Senator from Massachusetts because they did not agree with his religious beliefs, and this created a crisis for the campaign.

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Wall Street Opinion Journal Jordana Horn Friday, May 4, 2007

Interrupting the Intellectuals

“What’s He Doing Here?: Jesus in Jewish Culture.” An unusual conference title, to be sure, for what proved to be an unusual event on a beautiful spring Sunday in New York. Writers, critics, filmmakers and scholars gathered at the Center for Jewish History to discuss the man whom Leon Wieseltier termed “the world’s most famous ex-Jew.” The gathering was an intellectually illustrious one. Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt and poet Robert Pinsky were speakers on a panel coyly titled “Why I Think About Jesus.”

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Townhall.com | Michael Medved | April 25, 2007

When it comes to the issue of gay marriage, the Jewish Theological Seminary blinked and gave way to society’s shifting mores. So one must ask the question: Should we guide religion, or should religion guide us?

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Townhall.com Dennis Prager Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Within hours of the massacre of more than 30 people at Virginia Tech University, the president of the university issued his first statement on the evil that had just engulfed the college campus and concluded with this: “We’re making plans for a convocation tomorrow at noon in Cassell Coliseum for the university to come together to begin the healing process from this terrible tragedy.”

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