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Ugandans are presently caught up in the global billion dollar industry that television evangelism has become. We urge the police to carry out a no-nonsense inquiry into the activities of all pentecostal and other churches known to indulge their faith in this manner. Pastors who practice the falling down brand of 'healing' must subject themselves to police investigation. Whoever objects to this course of action, taken in the public interest, immediately becomes a suspicious character.

The police apparently agree. "Police are investigating the conduct of churches for born-again Christians in the wake of rising cases of pastors' impropriety," a separate Monitor article reports. "The detectives will be interested in the idea of sowing, the term used to describe the generous tithes that pastors manipulate churchgoers into giving in the honest expectation of miracles."

The pastor told the BBC that he didn't use the Electric Touch for religious purposes. "This is a toy. It was sent for my daughters' birthday," he told the BBC.

3. Time: Can Democrats really overcome the "God gap?"
If you've avoided all the talk about the "God gap" and the 2008 election so far, Time has a very good primer on Democrats' efforts to win over evangelical Protestants and rekindle its relationship with Catholics. But a sidebar on results of the magazine's polling has some real news: "The conventional wisdom about the two political parties and religion may be so ingrained that no amount of evidence to the contrary can change perceptions. That may very well help Republicans in 2008 despite their various religion issues. And it may also mean that most Democrats, with one important exception, will have to try twice as hard to reach faith-minded voters." Amy Sullivan, the voice crying in the Democratic wilderness four years ago, has a piece laying out her take on how Democrats lost religious conservatives.

4. Holsinger distances himself from his 1991 Methodist white paper
His 1991 paper for the United Methodist Church's Committee to Study Homosexuality on the physical risks of gay sex "does not represent where I am today. It does not represent who I am today," the nominee for U.S. surgeon general told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions today. "Questions have been raised about my faith and about my commitment to ensuring the health and welfare of all Americans, including Gay and Lesbian Americans [they're capitalized in his statement]. I am deeply troubled by these claims, which do not reflect who I am, what I believe, or the work I have accomplished in over 40 years of practicing medicine." While Holsinger has been savaged by the Left for the paper, he has received at best tepid from the Right, probably because he supported embryonic stem cell research in 2002. Asked about the issue in the final moments of today's hearing, he refused to say what his views are. "Since 2002, I have not had reason to stay engaged in the stem cell discussions," he explained.

I liveblogged the hearing over at our other blog. I'm most interested to see if there's any opposition to Holsinger's appointment from conservatives now that he has backed away from his 1991 paper. I'm also interested to see how many people talk about his most controversial statement at the hearing: He wants to ban drug companies from advertising to the general public.

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July (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51