Concord churches celebrate World Communion Sunday at Todos Santos Plaza, Oct 7
October 1, 2007
The public is invited to a community wide worship service to be held at Todos Santos Plaza in Concord, on Sunday, October 7, beginning at 5:00 p.m. The service celebrates World Communion Sunday. The event is organized by over 20 churches in the greater Concord area.
Religious bigots in Congress use Head Start to dismantle Civil Rights Act of 1964
June 24, 2007
House Democrats recently voted to discriminate against faith-based groups that participate in Head Start by disallowing the ability of care providers to hire and fire staffers based on religious grounds.
According to former White House staffer, Stanley Carlson-Thies, now with the Center for Public Justice,
“Under the 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964, it is not “discrimination” when a
faith-based organization ensures that its employees respect its religious
identity. To become inclusive, Head Start must accept religious organizations for whom a faith perspective is a legitimate job qualification—just as many secular groups check applicants’ political or environmental views.”
Would Congress pass a law that would prohibit extreme liberals like George Miller from hiring like-minded staffers? Should we force Planned Parenthood to hire Right-to-Life zealots? It’s past dangerous (and constitutional) when elected officials start deciding which viewpoints are acceptable in the public square based on partisan politics.
Time to reread banned books like the Bill of Rights and the 1st Amendment to the Constitution. Congress’s action borders on establishment of secularism as official State religion and should be challenged immediately in court.
If the public purpose of Head Start is education, and recipients have the right to choose some other provider, Congress should not foist such a plainly bigoted view point on a program that has a hard enough time justifying its mission and outcomes to Congress and the American public.
2008 Presidential campaign rhetoric will not bring us together
January 21, 2007
You can tune out now. It won’t make a difference. All the veiled Biblical references from candidates promising to create a “new politics” and to “bring America together” is baloney.
False prophets if you will.
For example, in his speeches and in his best-selling book, The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama tells Americans that he wants to transcend “the smallness of our politics” and lead a “project of national renewal.” In his web-site announcement on January 16, he identified himself with those who are hungry for “a different kind of politics.” He is expected to formerly announce his campaign on Feb 10.
Even New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, on announcing his presidential campaign exploratory committee, told AP that, “The country is looking for somebody to bring the country together — a unifier, a healer.”
It is not clear, however, what Obama or Richardson, or any other Democratic politician seeking to manipulate images of hope means by a “new politics.” They sound like a good ideas, but their voting records reveal only traditional liberal Democrat mumbo-jumbo.
These guys, Hillary, too, plus Republicans including McCain, Romney, Guiliani, as well as Brownback’s family vaules, must do more than spout platitudes about the critical condition of our national electoral and legislative systems. As Jim Skillen at the Center for Public Justice argues, “The reason today’s politics is so “bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence” (as Obama says in his book), is that interest-group politics, congressional management, and the electoral system reinforce one another to produce the outcomes we experience.”
Obama, Richardson, Clinton, Sharpton, McCain, Guiliani, Romney, Brownback— any of those knuckleheads winning an election will change none of this.
Let me repeat for emphasis.
Obama, Richardson, Clinton, Sharpton, McCain, Guiliani, Romney, Brownback— any of those knuckleheads winning an election will change none of this.
As president they each will have little power to advance a new politics unless during the campaign they declare their intention to reform the electoral system and then, after victory, lead Congress to make substantial changes.
But you and I both know this is not going to happen, and American voters will again—and quickly—wander off searching for some fresh new face who will blather on about “redeeming” the nation come the 2012 electoral cycle.
Two OpEds to meditate on this Sunday
January 14, 2007
Two OpEds that appeared in prestigious national newspapers made headlines last Sunday. Both dealt with tough topics concerning the state of religion in America.
In last Sunday’s USA Today, Oliver “Buzz” Thomas writes about the role of religion in his One Country, Many Faiths. Thomas describes the lay of the land: “We have a big group on the far right and a big group on the far left, and both groups plan to stick around. How, then, do we live together with such deep differences? Better still, how do we remain “one nation, indivisible?” Is there any real hope for finding common ground?”
Meanwhile, in the Washington Post, the Rev. Yates and Os Guiness explain, Why We Left the Epsicopal Church. These leading lights of American Protestantism explain that: “The American Episcopal Church no longer believes the historic, orthodox Christian faith common to all believers. Some leaders expressly deny the central articles of the faith — saying that traditional theism is “dead,” the incarnation is “nonsense,” the resurrection of Jesus is a fiction, the understanding of the cross is “a barbarous idea,” the Bible is “pure propaganda” and so on. Others simply say the creed as poetry or with their fingers crossed.”
I suppose the lesson is this: while faith communities (either religious or secular) may wage internicene battle, the Public Square must accommodate us all. This of course goes against the teaching of the secular left as well as the religious right, as both extremes attempt to show the true heathen the chapel door. In the end, faith communities, whether environmental or theological, can excommunicate while governments are public-legal communities that cannot.
Merry Christmas
December 25, 2006
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.
9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.
10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”
15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
Luke 2:8-15 (New International Version)
Cheap in America: Charity Giving Report on ABC’s 20/20, Wed., Nov 29
November 27, 2006
Tis the season. Do liberals give more than conservatives? Do religious people give mostly to their own churches? Do the rich give more than the middle-class and the middle-class more than the poor? And are billionaires cheap? The answers may surprise viewers. John Stossel’s special “Cheap In America” airs as a special edition of “20/20,” WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29 (10:00-11:00 p.m., ET), on the ABC Television Network.
Status of White House Office of Faith and Community Based Initiatives
November 26, 2006
See Eight Questions for Jay Hein for an interesting update on the status of federal funding for Faith and Community groups that comepte with secular organizations to provide social welfare services funded by HUD and other departments. Media General’s Sean Mussenden interviewed Hein, head of the White House office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
Southern Baptists table exit from public schools, for now
November 15, 2006
Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention refused Wednesday to support a resolution urging the denomination to form a strategy for removing children from public schools in favor of home schooling or education at private schools. The “exit strategy” proposal, offered by Roger Moran of Troy, Mo., and Texas author Bruce Shortt, came as many Southern Baptists are concerned about how classrooms are handling subjects such as homosexuality and “intelligent design.”
Instead, the SBC’s resolutions committee instead called on members to “engage the culture of our public school systems” by exerting “godly influence,” declining to put the proposal from Moran and Shortt before delegates to the SBC’s annual meeting.
Muslim veil stokes debate
November 13, 2006
Ahmed Nazeer, of the American Institute of Islamic History and Culture in Concord, California, was quoted recently in an AP story on the growing debate within the Muslim community of whether Islamic texts require Muslim women to wear veils.
Some prominent Islamic voices say some form of Islamic coverings is supported by Muslim law and customs. Most do not go beyond advocating some variation of head scarves and body-covering clothing. But many other Islamic scholars find flaws in any demands for the veil, which is often called by the Arabic term hijab.
“The hijab these days goes beyond religion into politics, culture and social,” says Nazeer. “These pressures are all coming down on Muslim women — to make a statement in favor of the one vision of Islam or another.”
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