Church and State - links
Bible Class Can Be Difficult, But Legal
Thursday, January 25, 2007 9:20 AM CST
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series looking at issues surrounding a proposed elective looking at the Bible as a cultural document. Friday’s report will examine the history of the Bible in the classroom.
By Amy Sherrill
TIMES RECORD • ASHERRILL@SWTIMES.COM
The Bible can be taught in a secular manner in public schools, according to law professors, First Amendment advocates and religious leaders, but teachers and school districts must walk a fine line to do it legally.
In Fort Smith Public Schools, no classes incorporate the study of the Bible in history and literature, but a Fort Smith group hopes that the school district adopts its proposal to do so.
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The Rev. Richard Land, Southern Baptist Convention, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said that a public school attempting to teach a course on the Bible is fraught with difficulties that are exacerbated because schools deal mostly with minors.
“A lot of these questions are different questions when you’re dealing with college students,” Land said. “Even as an elective course, I don’t know how you’re going to teach the Bible objectively and fairly in a secular school. If you teach it as a secular subject, well, that’s going to be perceived as being an approach to the Bible that is not balanced or fair by people of religious faith.”
He added that when the school board gets ready to make its decision, members should ask the litmus test question: If the school board is willing to have an elective course on the Bible, is it also willing to have an elective course on the Koran?
Jan 25, 2007
Topic: Faith, Bible, Family, Children, Education, Citizenship, Church and State, Religious Liberty
Pelosi Targets Grassroots Freedom of Speech
Human Events
Pelosi Targets Grassroots Freedom of Speech
by Amanda B. Carpenter
Posted Dec 18, 2006
House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) has pledged to take up a lobbying reform proposal that would impose new regulations on speech by grassroots organizations, while providing a loophole in the rules for large corporations and labor unions.
The legislation would make changes to the legal definition of “grassroots lobbying” and require any organization that encourages 500 or more members of the general public to contact their elected representatives to file a report with detailed information about their organization to the government on a quarterly basis.
The report would include identifying the organization’s expenditures, the issues focused on and the members of Congress and other federal officials who are the subject of the advocacy efforts. A separate report would be required for each policy issue the group is active on.
Dec 18, 2006
Topic: Citizenship, Church and State, Legislation, National, Religious Liberty
Newsweek Blog: Is America A ‘Christian Nation’?
BELOW TEXT IS FOR RECORD ONLY, NOT FOR PUBLICATION. NEWSWEEK OWNS EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS TO THIS CONTENT
Religious Americans Want Views Welcomed in Public Square
It is both inaccurate historically and inappropriate theologically to describe America as a “Christian nation.”
Historically, America was an attempt to establish a nation based broadly on Judeo-Christian values (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”) and Enlightenment ideas of self-government. In 1798, John Adams, the nation’s second president, said, “Our Constitution was made for a moral and a religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”
Theologically, a “Christian nation,” at least for Evangelical Christians, implies a nation where the vast majority of people are “converted” individuals who profess Christ as their personal Savior, a situation which has never been true in the United States, even when more than 90 percent of the population identified with some form of Protestant Christianity in 1790.
Lastly, one must make the distinction between “nation” and “government.” The nation encompasses the people and the society as a whole, as opposed to the government, which is merely the governing authority.
Most religious Americans believe in a secular government under the rubric of the First Amendment, but desire a religiously pluralistic, as opposed to a secular, society in which religiously informed viewpoints are welcomed in the public square on an equal basis with all other voices.
Posted by Richard Land on December 14, 2006 10:30 AM
Dec 15, 2006
Topic: Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Church and State, Religious Liberty
CNN - What is a Christian? (T-script)
CNN
ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES
What is a Christian?; New Moral Values; Evangelicals and Israel; End of Days; Capitalist Christian; The Seekers
Aired December 14, 2006 – 23:00 ET
As expert guests, Anderson will talk to Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Jim Wallis, author of “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It” and president of Sojourners, a progressive Christian ministry, along with Dwight Hopkins, a professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Dec 15, 2006
Topic: Faith, Bible, Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Church and State, Religious Liberty, Social Issues
TIME: Can a Mormon be President?
TIME Magazine
By MIKE ALLEN
Posted Sunday, Nov. 26, 2006
A mormon church official and a public relations executive shuttled recently from the Fox News Washington bureau to the Washington Post to the online political digest the Hotline. The two were engaging in a little pre-emptive rearguard action, gearing up for the impending Republican presidential campaign of Massachusetts Governor (Willard) Mitt Romney, 59, whose family has long been part of the church’s élite.
Nov 26, 2006
Topic: Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Church and State
WA Post: The Gospel According to Jim Wallis
Washington Post Magazine
By David Paul Kuhn
Sunday, November 26, 2006; Page W2
JIM WALLIS IS PREACHING ABOUT A BIBLE TORN APART. Wallis tells the crowd at the Seattle Pacific University chapel that when he was in seminary, a fellow student took hold of an old Bible and cut out “every single reference to the poor.”
“And when we were done, that Bible was literally in shreds. It was falling apart in my hands. It was a Bible full of holes. I would take it out to preach and say, ‘Brothers and sisters, this is our American Bible.’”
Nov 26, 2006
Topic: Faith, Apologetics, Bible, Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Church and State, Social Issues, War
Watchdog Group Accuses Churches of Political Action
A nonprofit group has filed a complaint asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the role that two churches may have played in the re-election campaign of Kansas’ attorney general.
Oct 26, 2006
Topic: Faith, Citizenship, Church and State, National
Boy Scouts suffer a legal setback in Supreme Court over discrimination
Six years after the Supreme Court ruled the Boy Scouts could ban gay leaders, the group is fighting and losing legal battles with state and local governments over its discriminatory policies.
Oct 20, 2006
Topic: Faith, Family, Abuse, Sexual Purity, Homosexuality, Citizenship, Church and State, Community Service, Human Rights, Legislation, Religious Liberty
Republicans’ Fertile Future
Republicans’ fertile future
Through the past three decades, conservatives have been procreating more than liberals
San Fransisco Chronicle
Vicki Haddock, Insight Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Sep 19, 2006
Topic: Family, Marriage, Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Church and State, National, Social Issues
Anti-Abortion Group Loses Tax Exemption
The Internal Revenue Service this week revoked the tax exemption of an anti-abortion group, Operation Rescue West, after receiving a complaint that it had violated prohibitions on electioneering by nonprofits in 2004.
Sep 15, 2006
Topic: Life, Abortion, Citizenship, Church and State, National