Billy Graham, the Last Nonpartisan Evangelical?
When he was asked in 2007 why he never affiliated with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, Mr. Graham replied: “I’m all for morality, but morality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice. We as clergy know so very little to speak with authority on the Panama Canal or superiority of armaments. Evangelists cannot be closely identified with any particular party or person. We have to stand in the middle in order to preach to all people, right and left. I haven’t been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will be in the future.”
All along, Wilburn had one question: Why did God want her to donate a kidney to a man in his 60s? Wouldn’t it make more sense to bless a younger person, someone with more years ahead of him?
The New View of Heaven Is Too Small
I embrace the main features of this counter-narrative to the rapture account. Redemption restores God’s good creation. Heavenly hope involves a material, embodied restoration. Heaven and earth will come together as Christ’s kingship is recognized by all creation. Moreover, we should embrace “the kingdom work” that calls us, as the revised song states. Yet, I also sense that we impoverish our hope for heaven when we turn it into an expression of our current activist emphasis upon “kingdom work.”
Ministers and the Lust for Applause
Consequently, when there is no applause or affirmation of one’s sermon or a particular project, this can be devastating. You might think that something is wrong with you. You might even think that you are lacking or inferior in some way. Silence might be interpreted as rejection or failure to a preacher.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will remove “nation of immigrants” from mission statement
The lead U.S. agency tasked with granting citizenship to would-be Americans is making a major change to its mission statement, removing a passage that describes the United States as a nation of immigrants.
US Immigration Doesn’t Check the Validity of Foreign E-Passports
Senators Ron Wyden and Claire McCaskill sent a letter (.pdf) to the acting commission of US Customers and Border Protection today asking that the US government actually start using the “anti-tamper and anti-forgery features in e-Passports, which have gone unused by CBP since their implementation in 2007.”
New Mexico restaurant refused to serve homeless man when woman tried to buy him food
She offered to buy Adams lunch at Bamboo Garden. She says she was shocked at the manager’s reaction. “I walked in behind him and I said ‘I would like to pay for his meal and a drink.’ She said, ‘No I can’t do that,’” she explained.
Please Donate to My Summer Missions Trip to Wakanda!
It will cost $89,000 for me to travel to Wakanda. That’s not an easy sum to pull together. Through my own grassroots efforts (car washes, iced tea stands, craigslist adventures) I’ve pulled together $113 on my own. Still a long way to go!