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Top Five Stories of the Day

1. Evangelical statement on global warming is a media sensation
Christianity Today Online yesterday covered the Evangelical Climate Initiative's Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action, but CT certainly isn't the only news outlet with interest in this subject. Dozens of newspapers and other media around the world are picking up the story with original reporting, and many others are picking up wire service stories. But it's also interesting that the D.C. media doesn't find the story newsworthy. There's no story at all in The Washington Times, which is usually better than most on covering evangelical political actions. And The Washington Post, which a week ago ran a full story under the headline, "Evangelicals Will Not Take Stand on Global Warming," only took note of the Evangelical Climate Initiative as a related item to the White House's action yesterday on global warming and polar bears.

2. NAE seeks to join Air Force lawsuit
At the same time that the National Association of Evangelicals was making news for not taking part in the Evangelical Climate Initiative, the association was also in the news for taking a position in a Jewish Air Force Academy graduate's lawsuit against the military branch. The NAE, which sponsors many military chaplains from smaller denominations, would enter the case as a party, rather than simply filing a friend of the court brief. Mikey Weinstein says the NAE's involvement is itself evidence that the government is seeking to "collaborate with fundamentalist Christians to convert members of the armed forces to evangelical Christianity." The American Jewish Congress sees things differently, and is applauding the NAE's actions. The AJC especially likes the NAE's statement that chaplains, when praying or conducting services for interfaith audiences, should make its religious references broad.

LATE BREAKING UPDATE: The Air Force has just released new religion guidelines. We'll have more news and commentary on them in Friday afternoon's Weblog posting, but in the meantime we have also posted a Religion News Service story.

3. Non-proselytizing prayer?
Opening government meetings with prayer is a constant subject in the religion news world, but the debate does seem to be heating up of late. One focus area is Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, where the American Civil Liberties Union has sued the local school board over the practice. In federal appeals court yesterday, attorneys for the school board argued that "prayers at school board meetings are constitutional unless they are intended to convert a person to a particular religion," according to The Baton Rouge Advocate. Debra Lemoine reports:

Judge [Rhesa] Barksdale read aloud a sentence from a prayer given during a school board meeting thanking God for "your greatest gift of all, your son, Jesus Christ."

"Tell me how this is not proselytizing?" Barksdale asked the board's attorneys.

[Board attorney Kirk] Gasperecz replied that although the cited prayer could be seen as proselytizing, the prayer does not follow the legal definition of proselytizing because it does not suggest converting to a particular faith.

Here's a question that apparently wasn't asked: Is a prayer with the primary intent of the religious conversion of someone else in the room still a prayer at all? Isn't the point of prayer to talk to God rather than to your neighbor? Of course, if the intent of prayer is to talk to other mortals in the room, then generic prayer with no actual deity invoked makes sense to a point. But if you're going to do that, why not just start meetings with "If You're Happy and You Know It" or the ever-so-annoying "Greet someone you haven't met before!"

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February (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50