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Faith Digest
Posted: 6/22/07
Faith Digest
Most Republicans doubt Darwin. Republicans are far more likely to doubt the theory of evolution than Democrats, a new Gallup Poll revealed. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans say they doubt humans evolved from lower life forms over millions of years; only 40 percent of Democrats hold the view. The poll was conducted by telephone last June and has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points. In a separate Gallup poll this May, respondents were asked to choose between three hypotheses about human origin and development. Just 14 percent believed God had no part in the process, while 43 percent believed God created man in present form. A full 38 percent took a centrist view, affirming that man evolved but God guided the process. Beyond political parties, the poll also found a correlation between church attendance and belief in evolution. Those who seldom or never attend church are three times more likely to be evolutionists than those who attend church weekly.
Bishop urges three-minute Sabbath in transit. An Anglican bishop has asked thousands of British rail commuters to spend a few minutes each day doing precisely nothing. To help them keep track of the three minutes of stress-beating silence he was urging upon them, Stephen Cottrell handed out miniature egg timers—which he called the “gift of time”—to travelers as they rushed by him at the train station. “By learning to sit still, slow down, by discerning when to shut up and when to speak out, you learn to travel through life differently,” Cottrell said. The cleric took his cue from a recent study by Britain’s University of Hertfordshire that found the walking speeds in 32 cities around the world had increased by 10 percent over the past decade.
06/22/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Baptists throw a lifeline to flooded Gainesville
Posted: 6/22/07
Texas Baptist Men volunteers Larry Toney of Wichita Falls and Jane Hayes of Whitesboro move boxes of food as the set up to serve meals in Gainesville. Baptists throw a lifeline
to flooded GainesvilleBy John Hall
Texas Baptist Communications
GAINESVILLE—Duke Dowling, pastor of Southside Baptist Church, admits he doesn’t know much about home repair. He can’t refurbish the more than 300 flooded homes in his community. He can’t even fix the home of the one family in his congregation whose home was swamped. But he knows plenty of people who can.
“I can’t build,” he said. “But I can go out and find people who can.”
06/22/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Tyler physician’s care for Iraqi refugees opens doors for ministry
Posted: 6/22/07
Tyler physician’s care for Iraqi
refugees opens doors for ministryBy Jessica Dooley
Communications Intern
YLER—Dick Hurst, a medical doctor and layman at First Baptist Church in Tyler, has journeyed to northern Iraq and the surrounding region at least a half-dozen times—including a trip earlier this year—to care for refugees and orphans.
And due in large part to the relationships he has built the last 16 years, multiple ministries are working together to meet needs in the region.
06/22/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Texas Baptist Forum
Posted: 6/22/07
Texas Baptist Forum
Recycle of abuse
Thank you for keeping clergy sexual abuse in the news (June 11).
I have been carrying the burden of this tragedy for over five years and still have tears running down my face. I don’t know if I will ever be the person I was before it happened to me.
• Jump to online-only letters below Letters are welcomed. Send them to marvknox@baptiststandard.com; 250 words maximum.
“I sometimes marvel when people running for office are asked about faith and their answer is: ‘Oh, I don’t get into that; I keep that completely separate. My faith is completely immaterial to how I think and how I govern.’ And to me that’s really tantamount to saying that my faith is so marginal, so insignificant, so inconsequential that it really doesn’t impact the way I live. I would consider that an extraordinarily shallow faith.”
Mike Huckabee
Republican presidential candidate and former Baptist pastor, discussing faith and politics at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (RNS)“He’d say, ‘Just a moment, Lyndon,’ put the phone on his chest, and then motion for me to come in. To me, that said I was more important than the president of the United States! I’d crawl up on his bed, content just to lie there with my head on his chest.”
Ned Graham
Recalling times during his childhood when his father, evangelist Billy Graham, was on the phone with then-President Lyndon Johnson (Charisma/RNS)Since there is not much that can be done in my case, I am praying that changes can be done to keep others from suffering.
06/22/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Following Scripture not easy recipe for political choices, ethicists insist
Posted: 6/22/07
Following Scripture not easy
recipe for political choices, ethicists insistBy Robert Dilday
Virginia Religious Herald
RICHMOND, Va. (ABP)—Abortion is the most pressing moral issue of the day, said Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican candidate for president, at a recent GOP debate. So much so, the Catholic senator continued, that he doesn’t think his party can nominate anyone who isn’t pro-life because that’s “at our core.”
See related articles:
• RENDER TO CAESAR: Some Baptists feel 'caught in the middle'
• Following Scripture not easy recipe for political choices, ethicists insist
• Pastors challenged to link faith, society in their sermons
• Pulpit politics run risk for churches
• 'Red Letter Christians' a growing political force
• Senator asserts global warming divides, distracts evangelicals from core issuesNot so fast, said former senator John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate from North Carolina. The “great moral issue of our time” is poverty in the United States, Edwards, a Methodist who was raised Southern Baptist, said in a Democratic candidate forum hosted by a Christian group. “As long as I am alive and breathing, I will be out there fighting with everything I have to help the poor in this country.”
06/22/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Pastors challenged to link faith, society in their sermons
Posted: 6/22/07
Pastors challenged to link faith,
society in their sermonsBy Ted Parks
Associated Baptist Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP)—Prophecy is not about gazing into the future. It’s about passion for a better world right now, speakers at a celebration of preaching stressed.
See related articles:
• RENDER TO CAESAR: Some Baptists feel 'caught in the middle'
• Following Scripture not easy recipe for political choices, ethicists insist
• Pastors challenged to link faith, society in their sermons
• Pulpit politics run risk for churches
• 'Red Letter Christians' a growing political force
• Senator asserts global warming divides, distracts evangelicals from core issuesWhile many think of the prophets of the Bible primarily as predictors of the future, that prophetic proclamation is mostly a critique of social evil and a call to justice, they said.
06/22/2007 - By John Rutledge
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‘Red Letter Christians’ a growing political force
Posted: 6/22/07
'Red Letter Christians' a growing political force
By Hannah Elliott
Associated Baptist Press
NEW YORK (ABP)—In what is shaping up to be a faith-filled race for the presidency, Republican and Democratic candidates have pulled out all the stops—hiring religion gurus, conscientiously attending church, discussing the intimate details of their prayer lives on national TV and publicly admitting personal struggles with sin.
It’s an effort to appeal to religious voters and—especially for Democratic candidates—dispel a perception that they don’t take religion seriously. The latest manifestation of that effort came at a George Washington University forum sponsored by the progressive Christian group Sojourners.
06/22/2007 - By John Rutledge
