LiturgicalCredo.com’s Blog

Newsmax.com posted an article about the backlash against Pat Robertson following the religious broadcaster’s endorsement of the not-so-socially-conservative Rudy Giuliani.

Some people are so ticked off at the Christian Coalition founder, they’ve made Roberston’s endorsement of Giuliani into a matter of heaven and hell. Newsmax.com reported in part:

Wiley Drake, former vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said Robertson sold out the pro-family community. Drake encouraged people to call the Christian Broadcast Network “and let them know that until Pat Robertson repents and comes back to the Lord, we will not listen to The 700 Club and we will not make any donations to The 700 Club.”

Does that mean Giuliani is the Devil? 

Fortunately, Michael Cromartie, director of the Evangelicals and Civic Life Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, brought some sanity to at least one of the article’s topics: “[Robertson] is not taken seriously. For the religious conservative movement, it has moved on. Mr. Robertson is important only as a curiosity to the mainstream media. I don’t know anybody in the evangelical [movement] who is sitting around saying ‘I am going to wait for what Pat does.’”

Read the full article at http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/robertson_giuliani_endors/2007/11/27/52687.html?s=al&promo_code=3E4D-1 .

I found this on the Web site of a prophetic ministry. Can you discern the heretical doctrines and general nuttiness within this promotional note for an upcoming conference?

There seems to be a remarkable new spiritual energy being released in our conferences. Everyone on our staff, as well as many who have been attending our conferences for years, seem to all think that our recent Harvest and Worship & Warfare Conferences were the best we’ve ever had. Overall, I think so too, but there was also a great spiritual momentum that I have honestly not felt anything like in over a decade. Already you can feel the spiritual energy building for our New Year’s Conference in which we seek the Lord for prophetic words for the coming year. In the past, we have received some that were remarkable. These are obviously crucial times, and we are going to need to have increasingly clear and accurate guidance for them. There is also a great spiritual momentum building, and if you are planning to join us for this conference, please register and reserve your rooms at Heritage as soon as possible, as space is limited and we are expecting this conference to fill up quickly.

Problems with the above promo:

1. How frequently did Biblical prophets hold conferences so they could hear from the Lord? And, conversely, how frequently did the Lord decide to talk to prophets at times the prophets had not previously scheduled? The suggestion is that we, or at least the right sages, can make God talk.

2. How does the Lord’s work depend on “spiritual momentum?” Does God need a running start to accomplish certain things? God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. No build-up required. No straining involved.

3. “Already you can feel the spiritual energy building for our New Year’s Conference in which we seek the Lord for prophetic words for the coming year.” First, see #2 above. Second, since when does God operate on the calendar year?

4. “There is also a great spiritual momentum building, and if you are planning to join us for this conference, please register and reserve your rooms…as soon as possible.” The word “and” sticks out here. Being a conjunction, the word “and” tends to connect related ideas. Perhaps, then, one could conclude that the “spiritual momentum” announced in the first part of this compound sentence is intended to encourage the registrations and reservations requested in the second part. Following the above italicized excerpt, a link to the confence Web site notes that registration for the conference is $50 each for adults and children. The price is a gamble on the possiblity that “some” of the prophecy this year will be “remarkable.”

Like so many ministries that claim special supernatural giftings, this ministry depends on its followers accepting the assumption that critical thinking will hinder the work of God. Thus, they open themselves up to nebulous, vapid, un-Biblical beliefs merely because those beliefs are presented with conviction. Yet the mind, like the heart, was created for humans to use.

-Colin Foote Burch

KANO, Nigeria, November 26 – Church leaders said violence over local elections in the Sumaila area this month included a religious element, with Muslims killing one Christian in an attack on a Christian settlement. Eyewitnesses said violence broke out in the Gani electoral ward of Sumaila on November 17 after news reports showed that the Christian candidate for councillor for the Peoples Democratic Party, Zara Gambo, was ahead in the polls, signifying the first ever victory for a Christian candidate in the area. As a result, Muslims attacked Christians in Gani town and in Gani Mission, a Christian settlement in the area, destroying their houses and shops, injuring several of them and killing school teacher Danyaro Bala. Sani Duma, Bala’s brother, told Compass that he believes Muslims killed the church elder in order to cow area Christians into submitting to Islam. “Religion is at the center of this attack on us and the killing of my brother,” Duma said. “The selection of only houses of Christians and their shops for destruction shows clearly that Muslims were out to force us into submitting to their hold on political leadership.”

-Compass Direct News

This coming Sunday, Dr. Francis S. Collins’ The Language of God (Free Press) will appear at No. 21 on the New York Times Paperback Nonfiction Bestseller list. It was released in 2006. Safe to say people are still reading it.

Thanks be to God.

This is a needed book in our time.  Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, explains his Christian faith as well as the reasonableness of evolutionary science. The Language of God is one of those books that can stand in the gap of our culture war.

The New York Times, however, has failed to give it more than a brief, if encouraging, review (viewing the review online requires a paid membership; if you’re signed up, click here).

If you haven’t seen this already, Willow Creek Community Church leaders say they have made a mistake:

Read this blog on their recent reconsideration of their approach to church and outreach:

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2007/10/willow_creek_re.html 

An open letter to the Diocese of Southwest Florida from Bishop John Lipscomb:

November 20, 2007,
Dear Friends in Christ,

I have communicated to the Presiding Bishop my request to be released from my ordination vows and the obligations and responsibilities of a member of the House of Bishops. I have taken this step in order to be received into the Catholic Church. Through a long season of prayer and reflection Marcie and I have come to believe this is the leading of the Holy Spirit and God’s call to us for the next chapter of our lives. We are grateful to our brother in Christ, the Most Rev. Robert N. Lynch, the Bishop of St. Petersburg, for his openness to our request and for his prayerful support.

I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home where I was given the gift of a deep love for the Lord Jesus Christ and a reverence for God’s revelation of his love and redemptive purpose in the Word written, as well as the Word made Flesh. I was blessed to be brought into the family of the Episcopal Church 40 years ago. I have a deep love for the sacramental life, most especially the Eucharistic sacrifice through which God continues to pour his grace into our lives in the Word that needs no words.
I will be forever grateful for the opportunities I had to serve this faith community as a deacon and priest. I am most grateful for the opportunity you, the people of the Diocese of Southwest Florida, gave me to serve as your bishop and to participate in the life of the Anglican Communion. You made it possible for me to share in the mission of God that can never be bound by geographical or political barriers.

I believe God is now calling us to continue our ministry to serve in the healing of the visible Body of Christ in the world. I am convinced our Lord’s deepest desire is for the unity of the Church.

Marcie and I will never have the words to express to you the depth of our gratitude for the support you gave us during my medical leave and for the joyous celebration of the ministry you allowed us to share with you that brings to a close my ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church. We will pray for the continued health and vitality of the Diocese of Southwest Florida.

The following prayer by Thomas Merton speaks more eloquently than we can find possible at this moment. Marcie and I have experienced an abundance of God’s grace throughout our lives, and we continue to trust God in the future, which continues to unfold for us:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

The Times of London reports today:

The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches took tentative steps towards healing their 950-year rift yesterday by drafting a joint document that acknowledges the primacy of the Pope.

The 46-paragraph “Ravenna Document”, written by a special commission of Catholic and Orthodox officials, envisages a reunified church in which the Pope could be the most senior patriarch among the various Orthodox churches.

Just as Pope John Paul II was driven by the desire to bring down Communism, so Pope Benedict XVI hopes passionately to see the restoration of a unified Church. Although he is understood to favour closer relations with traditional Anglicans, the Anglican Communion is unlikely to be party to the discussions because of its ordination of women and other liberal practices.

Unification with the Orthodox churches could ultimately limit the authority of the Pope, lessening the absolute power that he currently enjoys within Catholicism. In contrast, a deal would greatly strengthen the Patriarch of Constantinople in his dealings with the Muslim world and the other Orthodox churches.

Wow. Read the full article here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2880038.ece 

CAIRO, November 15 — Sick of hiding in a secret apartment in Cairo, Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy risked his life to shop for groceries late one night last week, a cap pulled low over his face. The Egyptian convert from Islam to Christianity does not normally chance being recognized in public by running errands for himself. Death threats forced Hegazy into hiding in August after he made an unprecedented legal bid to have his national ID card changed to note his conversion. The Christian acknowledged that he was finding his life in hiding extremely difficult. He said it was impossible to hold a job because he couldn’t leave his apartment regularly for fear of being attacked by Islamists or state security police. On a rare occasion that Hegazy took the chance of shopping in public, he said, a Christian recognized his face from a newspaper photograph. “If you are who I think you are, then God help you,” the Christian told Hegazy.

-Compass Direct News

DETROIT — Recordings of “Faith of Our Fathers: A Colloquium on Orthodoxy for Lutherans,” sponsored by St. Andrew House — Center for Orthodox Christian Studies Sept. 10-11, are now available on compact disc.

Ancient Faith Radio, the online Orthodox radio station, recorded the archbishop’s address and the presentations.  A set of eight compact discs in standard audio format containing all the recordings may be purchased for $54.95 from the station’s Web site at http://ancientfaithradio.com. The recording may also be listened to on or downloaded from the site in MP3 format.

For further information on the colloquium, visit the Web site of St. Andrew House — Center for Orthodox Christian Studies at http://www.orthodoxdetroit.com.
 
St. Andrew House was founded in 2001 to promote the Orthodox Christian faith by word and example through formal instruction, worship and good works; to serve the Orthodox clergy and faithful of metropolitan Detroit; and to be a symbol of the unity of the faith.

-Distributed by Religion Press Release Services

Peter Reinhart, whose whose writing appeared earlier this year at LiturgicalCredo.com, has added a new title to his famous line of bread books.

To check out Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor (Ten Speed Press), click the image below.

Read Peter’s contribution to LiturgicalCredo.com by clicking here.