The announcement that President-elect Obama had chosen Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inaugural ceremonies on January 20 came with formality but no fanfare. However, he now finds himself in a whirlwind, and he will not be the last. Pastor after pastor and church after church will face a similar challenge in short order. No matter how cool you think you are or think that others think you are, the hour is coming when the issue of homosexuality -- taken alone -- will be the defining issue in coolness. If you accept the full normalization of homosexuality, you will be cool. If you do not, you are profoundly uncool, no matter how much good work you do nor how much love and compassion you seek to express.
Albert Mohler "The High Cost of Being and Staying Cool"
Most American religious believers, including most Christians, say eternal life is not exclusively for those who accept Christ as their savior, a new survey finds. Of the 65% of people who held this open view of heaven's gates, 80% named at least one non-Christian group — Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists or people with no religion at all — who may also be saved, according to a new survey released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. This means 52% of Christians do not agree with the doctrines many religions teach, particularly conservative denominations. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, calls the findings "a theological crisis for American evangelicals. They represent at best a misunderstanding of the Gospel and at worst a repudiation of the Gospel." Pew's new survey also found that many Christians (29%) say they are saved by their good actions; 30% say salvation is through belief in Jesus, God or a higher power alone, which is the core teaching of evangelical Protestantism; and 10% say salvation is found through a combination of behavior and belief, a view closer to Catholic teachings.
Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY, "Many Beliefs, Many Paths to Heaven?"
What you’re about to see should even be enough to shake awake a Rip Van Winkle or two in evangelical leadership. From the December 19, 2008 CitizenLink from Focus on the Family (FotF), we read where Karla Dial, guest reporter, tells us:
For nearly a decade, Glenn Beck has been spreading the conservative political gospel through his syndicated radio program, The Glenn Beck Show, and has done the same as the host of his call-in television program on CNN since 2006. He’ll move to the Fox News Channel in January. But these days, Beck is hoping to spread a more eternal sort of gospel through his new book, The Christmas Sweater. (Online source)
Note FotF informs us that Beck “is hoping to spread” a “gospel.” Then we’re told:
The story, though not strictly biographical, is Beck’s own. The sweater was a real gift from his mother when he was 13 — the last Christmas before she committed suicide. A brother also committed suicide, and another died of a heart attack when Beck was young. Beck spent several years addicted to drugs and alcohol, coming to the verge of suicide, before turning his life over to God at the age of 35. Now he has a message for readers and viewers about facing life’s storms, and finding hope and redemption… (Online source)
Here we find out that part of this “gospel” Beck “is hoping to spread” is that he turned “his life over to God” where he found “hope and redemption.” And then FotF asks Beck:
2. What message do you hope people take away from The Christmas Sweater?
I think the message that you can’t really escape is (that) the Christmas sweater is the metaphor for me of the atonement for Christ. We’ve all been given a gift. We celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus — but the real point is the death, and why He died. (Online source)
Man, this sounds great, right? Well, it would be except that what FotF doesn’t tell you is that Glenn Beck is a baptized and practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons). Uh-huh; Beck is a Mormon, and you can hear his tear-filled conversion to the god (read: demon) of Mormonism in the video clip below (see Focus on the Family Link in my "For Fellow Aliens" blog). So now, in addition to reversing the Reformation, apparently FotF is also lining up in lock-step with the spiritually obtuse while Joel Osteen Blesses the Mormon Church as a Christian church. Ya just can’t make this stuff up folks.
Ken Silva, Apprising Ministries
In an interview with Nightline, President Bush discussed the Bible and faith. Although Bush is often perceived as a fundamentalist, some of his comments about the Bible may shock evangelical Christians. When Cynthia McFadden asked Bush whether or not the Bible was literally true, he said "probably not." He also suggested that those of other faiths pray to the same God. Bush was also open to the idea that creationism and evolution were not mutually exclusive. Although Bush is a favorite with evangelicals and conservative Catholics, his Nightline interview depicts him as quite moderate in terns of faith. Videos of the interview are available on youtube.
Tina Molly Lang, www.associatedcontent.com, Dec 11, 2008
NEW YORK (AP) — Neale Donald Walsch, best-selling author of “Conversations with God,” said Tuesday that he unwittingly passed off another writer’s Christmas anecdote as his own in a recent blog post. As a result, Walsch’s blog on the spirituality Web site Beliefnet.com has been shut down. The Web site said in a statement that Walsch had failed to properly credit and attribute material from another author. Walsch had written about what he described as his son’s holiday concert two decades ago in which children were to hold up letters spelling “Christmas Love.” One of the children held the “m” upside down, so the audience got the message “Christwas Love,” according to the retelling.
Author Candy Chand said in an interview Tuesday that she stumbled onto Walsch’s post when she ran “Christmas Love” through an Internet search engine. She immediately recognized her own words, from her story based on her son’s kindergarten Christmas pageant. She contacted Walsch and Beliefnet.
[...]
Walsch wrote on his blog Tuesday he was “truly mystified” about what happened and apologized. He said he had been telling the story for years in public talks and “somewhere along the way, internalized it as my own experience.” “As a published author myself, I would never use another author’s words as my own,” Walsch wrote. “Yet I have apparently done just that — although with no deliberate intent to do so.” Chand, of Rancho Murieta, Calif., said she did not believe Walsch’s account. “It’s pretty difficult for me to believe that someone has a memory lapse that is word for word my story,” she said. “He deleted the first paragraph. That’s it.”
Source: Best-selling “God” author faces plagiarism claim, AP, Jan. 7, 2009 — Summarized by Religion News Blog
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