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"Last year, the churches and businesses of South Carolina rose up as one to help drive the electric jangle of video poker from the state," reports The New York Times. "But now, as pastors work to rouse their congregants against a proposed state lottery on the November ballot, they are finding a bit less sympathy in the pews and the state's corporate offices." Alabama rejected a lottery last October. The Charlotte Observer reports that "church leaders' opposition is as strong, or stronger, than it was to video poker," but agrees that they're having a hard time convincing laity of the lottery's ills.

The dorms for Patrick Henry College, the first college for homeschooled students, aren't done yet. In the meantime, the students are doing what they've always done: living at home (actually, at the homes of other local homeschoolers). Bob Andringa, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, is skeptical of the school. Higher education, he says, is a search for truth. "When the administration starts advocating particular points of view, it makes it a trickier balance," he tells The Washington Post. Staff writer Amy Argetsinger also notes that Andringa "questioned why a school that is philosophically opposed to federal aid would then want to send its students 'to learn how to be effective in government.'" The article also notes that college founder and president Michael Farris is waging an uphill battle by "trying to start a college from scratch … at a time when many small private colleges—ones with millions in assets, and generations of supportive alumni—are struggling to survive. … Virtually no new private, nonprofit liberal-arts colleges have started up in the United States, let alone thrived, for years."

Senator Joseph Lieberman has been pontificating about Jewish laws on intermarriage, traditional Jewish prayers, and other issues about theology and Jewish law. "[Interviewers] should stop asking him about it, and he should stop talking about it," Mandell Ganchrow, president of the Orthodox Union, tells the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "Given that intermarriage is probably the No. 1 problem affecting the Jews today, I don't know what went through Lieberman's mind when he said [there's no law prohibiting it]." Eric Yoffie, president of the Reform movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations, agrees: "He's not a rabbi, he's a politician in a national campaign with the burden of explaining Judaism to millions of Americans."

Matthew Burke, the 43-year-old pastor of True Worship Temple of God in Stapleton, New York, held up nine employees of a Head Start school to pay a $4,500 debt his church owed to the American Legion post where it meets. It's not the Rev. Burke's first run-in with the law. He's on parole after serving 15 years for first-degree sodomy and first-degree robbery.

Jim Bakker will be speaking on "Integrity in Ministry" to the Southeast Religious Broadcasters conference this week. "Sometimes you can learn more from mistakes than successes," explains the former PTL televangelist who served five years for bilking $158 million from his supporters. "This is shaping up to be a case of 'Do as I say, not as I do,'" notes Ken Garfield, religion editor for The Charlotte Observer. If a semi-repentant Clinton can lecture pastors on moral leadership, surely a repentant Bakker can speak on integrity. (Thanks to Jim Romenesko's Obscure Store and Reading Room for the last two links.)

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October (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44