InterVarsity Okayed, But UNC's Discrimination Debate Continues

Christian clubs at University of North Carolina still face problems The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is apparently working hard not to be too harsh toward student groups that do not comply with the school’s anti-discrimination policy. It has extended its January 31 deadline for groups to turn in their revised charters and bylaws. And, as noted earlier in Weblog, UNC Chancellor James Moeser allowed the campus’s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship chapter to require its officers abide by Christian doctrine (though the campus’s Queer Network for Change is attempting to get Moeser’s decision overturned.)

But while InterVarsity has special dispensation from the school’s chancellor, other groups do not.

“For most (groups) they had to change the word ‘sex’ to ‘gender’ or things like that [in their charters],” Jon Curtis, assistant director for student activities and organizations, told The Daily Tar Heel, the campus’s student newspaper. “But all the groups have to be uniform with the University. We can’t make exceptions.”

For the group Brotherhood in Christ, it was a pretty easy change—the all-male Christian group had to allow women. “If someone would have wanted to join regardless of sex, we probably would have let them in anyway,” Jamaal Edwards said.

But as result of the edict, the Tar Heel reports, the Episcopal Campus Ministry has removed the word Christian from its purpose statement.

“I am more or less indifferent about the entire change,” said the group’s Matt Curtis. “The argument recently has been motivated more by politics and legal scare than by a true ‘moralistic’ and heartfelt cause.” Yep, he’s an Episcopalian, all right.

Columbia astronauts’ faith

Commander with the righteous stuff | Wearing his Texas roots and spirituality proudly, Rick Husband was antithesis of NASA’s space cowboys (The Washington Post)
“He marveled at creation and worshipped the creator” | Christian singer Steve Green talks about his friendship with Columbia commander Rick Husband and his family (Connie Chung Tonight, CNN)
Seven heroes, seven faiths | Columbia crew represented wide variety of spiritual paths (ABCNews.com / Beliefnet)

Gen X and youth churches:

Ministry in the extreme | Churches spend big to draw youth but say it takes more than that to keep them there (The Dallas Morning News)

Christ and a cup of Joe | Welcome to Summit Salt Lake, a Generation X-style church based in the prototypical Generation X hangout: a coffeehouse (The Salt Lake Tribune)
The Gen X church | Isle churches take lessons from a California preacher who takes examples of the Gospel from TV and films (Honolulu Star-Bulletin)
Stretch limo takes teens to church | Young people in Tonyrefail were driven by limousine to Cymmer Apostolic Church on Sunday night for an evening featuring the lights, beats, smoke machines, computer-generated projections and volume normally associated with the most exciting nightclubs (The Western Mail, Wales)
Lo there came a trendy vicar | Rock music, magic tricks, nose studs … Jamie Allen is causing a stir in Wiltshire (The Times, London)

Church life:

Gaps between pulpits and pews | What fewer people seem to realize is that there is an even bigger gap between pastors and the people who are leading their national churches (Terry Mattingly)
Church fact book put in new hands | Churches of Christ researcher shifting focus to education (The Tennessean, Nashville)
Church provides health care for those without coverage | A new health-care center at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church is the latest to join a handful of privately managed facilities designed to provide free health care for the growing number of lower-income, uninsured individuals in Central Florida (The Orlando Sentinel)
Radical plans for all-male ‘province’ within the Church of England | Radical plans to create a traditionalist Church-within-a-Church for opponents of women bishops are being drawn up by legal experts after the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed sympathy for the idea (The Daily Telegraph, London)
Churches escape licensing reforms | Churches are to be made exempt from licensing reforms which critics claimed would have led to carol singers being criminalized (BBC)
Also: Churches win fight for licensing exemption (The Guardian, London)
Also: U-turn lets church off concert fees (The Daily Telegraph, London)
State of black church is seminar topic | Radio program host will lead Detroit event (Detroit Free Press)

Missions and ministry:

Late missionary touched lives here, abroad | Hannah Renee Showaker, 24, died in a flash flood in Indonesia while on a missionary assignment (The Sentinel, Carlisle, Pa.)
Almighty strength | Power Team will share message in Shoals (Times Daily, Northwest Indiana)
Not all missionary work is far away—some needs are met in Hollywood | A program called City Dwellers puts young adult Christians in a communal setting, from which they help their neighbors (Los Angeles Times)
Christian Medical Association releases guide for missions workers | PDA version available for download (Kingsport [Tenn.] Times-News)
Evangelists bring message to West Side | 1,000 from Texas and Mexico are attending the Hispanic Baptist Evangelism Conference at Trinity Baptist Church (San Antonio Express-News)
Let there be lightness | Burt Rosenberg makes ’em laugh, think & get buddy-buddy with god (The Washington Post)
Faithful ponder stewardship of the planet | An environmental movement is sweeping churches, synagogues and mosques (The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.)

India:

Chief Minister urged to protect missionaries in Kerala | All India Christian Council alleged that the State Government had succumbed to the pressure of the Union Government, which was blindly following what it termed as the “racist and communalist agenda” of the RSS and other fundamentalist groups (Kerala Next, India)
Also: Christian group warns about RSS inroads into Kerala (Kerala Next, India)
Also: Christian body slams govt in Cooper case (Kerala Next, India)
Why isn’t the media accountable? | Why isn’t the media reporting that Australian missionary Graham Staines was evil and that his murderers were heroes? (Arvind Lavakare, Rediff.com)

Life ethics:

Bill banning ‘partial-birth’ endorsed | Bill seeks to avoid constitutional challenges that have plagued earlier late-term abortion bills by avoiding any reference to the word abortion. (The Roanoke [Va.] Times)
Abortion bill clears Georgia Senate committee | House Democrats say they don’t intend to hear controversial legislation that would require a 24-hour waiting period (Savannah Morning News)
Teacher apologizes for abortion discussion | Math teacher had students divide the 40 million abortions of the past 30 years by the 45,000-seat capacity of Safeco Field, and do the same with the number of Jews (6 million) who died in the Holocaust (The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash.)

Trimester trimming | The media’s elastic interpretations of Roe v. Wade (Tim Graham, National Review Online)
Inside a Crisis Pregnancy Center | Lessons learned about bad fathers, young mothers, despair, and hope (Eve Tushnet, The Weekly Standard)

Conception misconception | It’s not so simple to say when a human embryo becomes a human being (Margaret Wertheim, LA Weekly)
The final frontier | Depending on whom you ask, stem-cell research is either a medical godsend or further proof that God is dead (LA Weekly)

Sex and marriage:

When forever isn’t | Christian divorce attorneys operate in line of fire (Christian Times)
Religious leaders back marriage campaign | Britain’s religious leaders are to lead a campaign next week to shore up marriage after Cabinet ministers withdrew Government backing and money (The Daily Telegraph, London)
Gay activist vows not to defy churches | MPs told approving same-sex marriage would not forsake religious rights (National Post, Canada)
Vicar denies affair with Who star’s girlfriend | The vicar who buried The Who’s John Entwistle is on “stress” leave after denying allegations of an affair with the star’s grieving girlfriend (The Evening Standard, London)
Catholic priest, nun stray from traditional church teachings | In “Tender Fires: The Spiritual Promise of Sexuality”, John Heagle and Fran Ferder present their vision of healthy sexuality and of what church and society can do to encourage it (The Seattle Times)

Sexual ethics:

Gay minister will not face church trial | Appeals panel upholds ruling (The Seattle Times)
A call for action | Canton Presbyterian church wants ban on gay clergy enforced (The Beacon Journal, Akron, Ohio)
Congregations reach out to welcome gays to the fold | An increasing number of churches are taking steps to show that they welcome gays and will treat them as equals in all aspects of congregational life (The Washington Post)
Boston College gay, straight alliance approved | The move, which is likely to anger some conservative alumni, followed a series of impassioned editorials in the student newspaper last fall and months of talks (The Boston Globe)
Texas school district is sued over a gay-straight club | Seventeen students asked for permission to form a Gay-Straight Alliance last October, but neither the principal nor the school district has granted the club permission yet (The New York Times)
Gay Baptist church, possibly the first, finds a home in Phila. | Fusion Baptist Church, which will hold its inaugural worship service tonight, says it was created specifically “for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community and the people who love them” (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Defining pornography proves tricky, even in a Utah town | Even in a state where 70 percent of residents belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, agreement on what counts as indecent material can be elusive (The New York Times)
What the stripper said to the bishop | As Scotland gains another lap-dancing club, our moral guardians are aghast. Why? Are they really such dens of iniquity? We took ethics expert and former church leader Richard Holloway to one such establishment; what he found will surprise you as much as it did him (The Sunday Herald, Glasgow, Scotland)
Also: But what happens when the fun stops? | Seven Days editor Charlene Sweeney accompanied Richard Holloway to the lap-dancing club. She gives a female perspective on the experience … and looks beyond the naked flesh to the darker issues of the sex industry (The Sunday Herald, Glasgow, Scotland)
Also: Bishop’s bash at the lap dancing girlie bar | Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh, says he wasn’t turned on while doing “research” for newspaper article (The Daily Record, Scotland)

Bible:

New Bible includes gender-neutral references | Some church leaders voice concern (KHBS, Ft. Smith, Ark.)
Bibles popular with deploying Marines | The uniforms Marines are wearing to the Middle East aren’t the only things that are camouflaged (North County Times, Escondido, Calif.)

Theology:

Pastor’s question about Jesus became a big deal | Misunderstanding stirred up doctrinal issues (Toledo [Oh.] Blade)
How much does God know? | A theology group may move to expel two members for asking the question (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Provocative points can be proved peacefully | Patrick Madrid, who makes his living as an apologist for the Catholic faith, insists there is a way to discuss and even defend one’s beliefs without disturbing the peace (The Toledo Blade)

European Union:

Europe debates whether to admit God to Union | A group of politicians will meet to debate whether or not the European Union’s future constitution should include a reference to the divine (The New York Times)
Sacred mysteries | How “In God We Trust” got on American currency, and why it’s not on the Euro (Christopher Howse, The Daily Telegraph, London)

Crime:

O’Hair death mastermind dies in prison | David R. Waters, who masterminded the kidnapping and murder of atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair and her family in 1995, succumbed to lung cancer last week (San Antonio Express-News)
Also: Inmate convicted in atheist’s plot dies in prison (Associated Press)

Parsonsburg church heals after vandalism | Despite the hate messages written on the church walls, pastor Rick Parrott said the incident has had the reverse effect, bringing people in the area closer together (Daily Times, Salisbury, Md.)
Man jailed for posing as priest at funeral | Trevor Norkett, 42, had been banned under a Sex Offenders’ Order from dressing in religious garments after posing as a clergyman and sexually abusing a nine-year-old boy in 1999 (The Daily Telegraph, London)
Man says he drove into woman at bus stop because she is black | Says Jesus told him to do it (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
Pair apologize for defacing Jesus statue | A man and woman who vandalized a baby Jesus statue in a church’s outdoor nativity marched through town with a donkey to apologize (Associated Press)

Clergy sex abuse:

Va. priest pleads guilty to abusing boy | But John P. Blankenship avoided prison sentence (Associated Press)
An abuse of the law | The prime obligation of church leaders is not to contest the suits but to settle all legitimate claims of abuse (Editorial, The Boston Globe)
Deadline on abuse cases at issue | Supreme Judicial Court to hear appeal on three-year limit (The Boston Globe)
Judge bars Oregon bishop from transferring assets under threat of sex-abuse lawsuit | Bishop Robert Vasa says he has been working to transfer ownership of properties to the individual churches that use them, and never intended to avoid any future liabilities (Associated Press)
Church minister ‘abused inmates’ | Neville Anthony Husband, who is charged with 16 sexual offences, is now a minister in the United Reformed Church, and responsible for two churches in Gateshead (BBC)
Help agency monitors molestation allegations | Religious Community Services, an agency in Pinellas County that helps the poor and homeless, is monitoring allegations that its director molested two teenage boys decades ago, when he was a priest and Catholic school principal in Nashville (St. Petersburg Times)