A group of evangelical Christians is trying to get the point across that the science isn’t settled on global warming, and indeed that the "cure" may be worse than the disease.

While it may seem like everyone believes in global warming and the impending catastrophe it will bring, a group of conservative Christians countered that message Thursday by launching a national campaign to gather one million signatures for a statement that says Christians must not believe in all the hype about global warming.

The “We Get It!” declaration, which currently has nearly 100 signers, is backed by prominent Christians including Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, award-winning radio host Janet Parshall, and U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

What supporters of the statement seek is to inform Christians about the biblical perspective on the environment and the poor, and to encourage them to look at the hard evidence, which they say does not support the devastating degree of climate change claimed by mainstream society.

The point is that there’s more to global warming than carbon offsets and fluorescent light bulbs.  There are people to be considered.

[Dr. Barrett Duke, vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission] called it an “unbiblical” response to make policies based on unsettled data that would push the poor further into starvation and poverty.

But the SBC leader made sure to clarify that he and other signers are not “anti-earth.”

“It isn’t as though we think that the earth is here to be abused. It is not,” he said. “It is God’s creation and we have a responsibility to care for it and to do all that we can to help it be the place that God wants it to be.”

Yet at the same time, policies should not be made to sacrifice the needs of the most needy in order to “reach some kind of standard” that may not even be reachable, Duke argued.

“If humans are not causing the problem then it doesn’t matter how much we reduce CO2 emissions. It won’t make any difference,” he said.

Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, founder and spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, brought the point home. 

“The number of premature deaths, number of diseases, and the harm to the human economy that can be predicted from the policies used to fight the warming” is more destructive than even if all the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)-predicted global warming-caused disasters came true, Beisner said emotionally to The Christian Post.

“You try to cap emissions and you kill more people than die if you don’t cap emissions,” Beisner said, referring to those who would die from lack of access to energy, higher food prices, and the halt in their country’s economic development.

“We will have killed people,” he added solemnly. “We care about this issue the same way why we care about abortion. It kills people.”

This is explained in the Cornwall Alliance’s declaration itself.

Public policies to combat exaggerated risks can dangerously delay or reverse the economic development necessary to improve not only human life but also human stewardship of the environment. The poor, who are most often citizens of developing nations, are often forced to suffer longer in poverty with its attendant high rates of malnutrition, disease, and mortality; as a consequence, they are often the most injured by such misguided, though well-intended, policies.

The old joke goes that, finding out that the world was to end tomorrow, the mainstream media would blare out headlines, "WORLD ENDS TOMORROW – POOR, MINORITIES HARDEST HIT!"  Interestingly, in this case, and in the case of so many causes that the press is on board with, that effect is only examined long after they’ve done their persuading, if at all. 

The idea that Christians don’t worry themselves about science is, of course, completely wrong.  Indeed, what needs to be done in the case of global warming is an examination, not just of the science of climate and our globe’s history, but of the proposed solutions and how they relate to our charge as children of God.

Technorati Tags: environment, global warming, Christianity, climate change, we get it, Tony Perkins, Dr. James Dobson, Senator James Inhofe, Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation

Would a documentary about Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, or Area 51 ever, ever get time on ABC’s Nightline? You wouldn’t think so. And yet, Bruce Burgess, who’s done all three, got his own segment on the nighttime news show.

Inconceivable? Well, when you find out the topic of his most recent movie, it all makes sense.

Over a three day stretch, ABC devoted almost 15 minutes of air-time to a documentary filmmaker who asserts in his movie “Bloodline” that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was a massive hoax perpetrated on humanity. Additionally, on Friday’s “Nightline,” reporter Elizabeth Vargas left out any mention of the bizarre interests of the film’s director, Bruce Burgess. He’s directed and written documentaries on Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, Area 51 and a secretive look at a U.S. government’s supposed cover-up of the alien landings at Roswell.

Are you a conspiracy theorist concerned citizen looking for some face time on the mainstream media? You, too, can grab the coattails of major news organization and soak in some of their reputation for yourself. Simple; just trash Christianity. Trashing Islam may get you killed, but trashing Christianity will get you an audience.

Those coattails are looking pretty tattered.

Technorati Tags: ABC News, Nightline, Elizabeth Vargas, Bruce Burgess, Bloodline, Christianity, religion, Bigfoot, Bermuda Triangle, Area 51, Islam, media

Obama could no sooner disown the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than he could disown the black community.  Well, at least up until the past few days.  He still hasn’t disowned him per se, but he certainly has tried to distance himself from his 20-year pastor.

But the discussion has been that what one heard from Wright’s pulpit was part and parcel of church in that selfsame black community.  But the LA Times has been asking black clergymen in LA and finds that, no, Wright’s rants aren’t necessarily mainstream.

In a series of nationally televised appearances over the last few days, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. has defended his controversial remarks as "prophetic theology," and said criticism of him amounted to an attack on the black church.
But most black church leaders and members reached Tuesday disagreed.

"This didn’t have anything to do with the black church — it was basically an attack on the individual message he proclaimed, which hurt some individuals," said the Rev. K.W. Tulloss of Weller Street Missionary Baptist Church in Boyle Heights. "My own members were offended by Rev. Wright’s words. His views have cast a wedge between people, and that’s the exact opposite of the unity Jesus represented."

[…]

Bishop John Bryant of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who has known Wright for 30 years, said he would have used less provocative language.

"How one speaks is as important as the right to do so," Bryant said. "If it is done in an inflammatory way, the substance of the message gets lost in the rhetorical style."

Kerman Maddox, a member of First AME church in Los Angeles, said that he had listened to hundreds of sermons in black churches nationwide as part of his political and community work, and that Wright’s messages did "not represent mainstream black thought on Sunday morning."

He said he had never heard pastors curse America or proclaim, as Wright had, that the U.S. government caused AIDS among blacks. He said the common pulpit themes had long been unity, personal responsibility, loving your neighbor and improving your neighborhoods.

But the biggest concern Tuesday among local black religious leaders — and across a wide swath of black Los Angeles — was not about Wright’s words per se but about their impact on Obama’s historic campaign.

It’s been a while since all this came out; why didn’t anyone in the media think to ask these questions earlier? 

But the main question to me is this; what does this say about Obama himself?  He’s not running on experience — he’ll lose to McCain if he is — so one of main things to consider is his judgement.  If he’s shocked to find out that his own pastor is so far out of the mainstream after spending 20 years with him, that does not reflect well on that judgement.

I’ve recommended audio from the Acton Institute before, and they just keep cranking out great commentary. Today’s recommendation is for Jay Richard’s “Is it Hot In Here? What Should Christians Think About Global Warming?” At an hour and 20 minutes, it’s a bit to take in, but it goes in depth into 4 questions that Jay considers the main issues.

1. Is the globe warming?
2. Is man causing it?
3. Is it a bad thing?
4. What can / should government do about it?

You’ll find that Jay does believe that we’re in a warming trend if you only look back to the mid-1800s, but there have been times when the Earth has been much warmer, and Jay mentions something I’ve touched on before; that Greenland used to be farmland before SUVs, and yet the polar bears survived.

He’s clear about what is his opinion and what is fact, so I think this is a balanced assessment of the situation.

Technorati Tags: environment, global warming, Acton Institute, Jay Richardson, Christianity

Shire Network News #126 has been released. The feature interview is with Kate McMillan of Small Dead Animals and Kathy Shaidle of Five Feet of Fury, two of the Canadian bloggers being sued by former Human Rights Commission employee Richard Warman. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News, asking you to “Consider This!”

As you know, if you’ve been an SNN listener for more than a month or so, that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has been prosecuting bloggers, writers and journalists over thought crimes regarding their views of radical Islam. Publishing the Danish cartoons is not, apparently, the problem. Having the wrong thoughts while publishing them seems to be the horror that the Canadian HRC is trying to abolish (while, of course, enriching the plaintiffs’ wallets).

The United States, however, has apparently decided that it needs to keep up with the Joneses. In New Mexico, that state’s HRC has now decided what pictures you simply must take. You no longer have a choice in the matter.

The New Mexico Human Rights Commission ruled on Wednesday that an evangelical Christian photographer discriminated against a lesbian couple by refusing a job to photograph the couple’s same-sex commitment ceremony. Religious rights attorneys plan to appeal.

The commission ordered Elaine and Jon Huenins, owners of Elane Photography in Albuquerque, N.M., to pay the lesbian couple $6,600 in attorney fees.

The old saying goes that when all you have is a hammer, everything around you looks like a nail. It’s also well known that government agencies tend to expand into areas not originally in their purview. I give you Exhibit A.

Contributing to its descent into being inaptly-named, the Human Rights Commission has now found that, in spite of our Constitution’s First Amendment protections of free speech and religion, people can no longer act on their conscience when picking up their camera. One might find it shocking hearing that, in Canada, an HRC investigator, when asked about freedom of speech, replied, “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.” (One might find it odd to hear this when that “American concept” seems to have made it into section two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.) But if we were to assume that this idea is indeed an “American concept”, one then needs to be outraged that one of our American states seems not to give it any value, either. Guess “freedom of speech” is no long a human right, hmm?

You might be led to think that there was not a single other photographer in all of Albuquerque. You’d, of course, be quite wrong. My suggestion to Vanessa Willock, the woman bringing the complaint, is: Google is your friend. We still have, as far as I know, a concept here called “the free market”, even (I think) in New Mexico.

This is obviously a case of using the club of government to beat into submission those who do not agree with you. How “tolerant” and “open minded”. I’m so glad that homosexuals don’t want any “special rights”. Choosing who you enter into a contract with is still a matter of some personal choice, unless the HRC thinks that lesbians now have some sort of “special right” to force you into signing on the dotted line. The Supreme Court said the Boy Scouts had a choice in the matter vis a vis homosexuals. Unless Elane Photography is government run or government funded, which I rather doubt, chances are they get the same choice.

Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law School professor and noted constitutional scholar put another ironic twist on this. Seems that the law says that the government can only compel someone to violate their religious beliefs if there is a “compelling government interest”. The twist is that New Mexico does not recognize same-sex marriages! So the only compelling interest there might be is for the HRC to justify its existence, or perhaps to pander to the compelling liberal interest groups that traffic in political correctness.

Well lemme’ tell you; Canada is not going to one-up the good ol’ US of A when it comes to bureaucratic silliness and big-government insanity. That, may I say, is truly an “American concept”.

Brian of London, welcome to my country. I’m glad to have you, but consider that.

Technorati Tags: human rights, Canadian Human Rights Commission, New Mexico Human Rights Commission, New Mexico, Elaine Huenins, Jon Huenins, Elane Photography, freedom of speech, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Vanessa Willock, homosexuality, Christianity, First Amendment, Eugene Volokh

The purpose of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has been eroded and molded to fit 21st century liberal sensibilities; that is to say, to take it as much out of the public square as possible.  When Thomas Jefferson responded to the Danbury Baptists, he was responding to a specific question — government interfering with or establishing a religion — and he gave a specific answer.

Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

Basically, the government will not try to take away man’s natural right of conscience.  It’s the coercion factor that was at issue.  An established religion would require allegiance to the state church for all public servants. 

But no matter how much you want to mangle this straightforward concept, did it really mean to abolish this?

East Brunswick High School football coach Marcus Borden, who said he is fighting for his peers nationwide, is expected to petition the U.S. Supreme Court for a review of Tuesday’s federal appeals court ruling that prohibits him from participating in team prayer.

The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia unanimously reversed a July 2006 lower-court ruling that permitted Borden, through his lawsuit against the East Brunswick Board of Education, to silently bow his head or "take a knee" with players as a sign of secular respect for student-led team prayer.

The plaintiffs, represented by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, say respect is indeed the issue.

"The ruling underscores that school district employees, including football coaches, have to obey the establishment clause and have to respect the religious rights of students," said Richard B. Katskee, assistant legal director for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, which represented the school board in its appeal of U.S. District Judge Dennis Cavanaugh’s ruling.

Respecting the fact that they were praying, then, is somehow a disrespect of their religious rights?  And what of the rights of the coach?  Does he have to check them at the locker room door?  Note that we’re not talking about him bringing a Bible or leading the prayers; he’s just in the room when the students pray and takes the same position as they do. 

The judges opinions in this case are just as tortured as the logic used to misread the First Amendment. 

Read the rest of this entry

Should a painter be allowed to decide what he or she paints?  Should a musician be allowed to decide what music to play or write?  Should a photographer be allowed to decide what pictures to take? 

In New Mexico, the answer to that last question is a resounding, "No."

The New Mexico Human Rights Commission ruled on Wednesday that an evangelical Christian photographer discriminated against a lesbian couple by refusing a job to photograph the couple’s same-sex commitment ceremony. Religious rights attorneys plan to appeal.

The commission ordered Elaine and Jon Huenins, owners of Elane Photography in Albuquerque, N.M., to pay the lesbian couple $6,600 in attorney fees.

"It is just a stunning disregard for the First Amendment," said Jordan Lorence, a senior legal counsel for the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the photographer couple in court.

Canada’s Human Right Commission has been, at the same time, busy accusing Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn and others of thought crimes (covered by the Shire Network News podcast here and here with many more details at FreeMarkSteyn.com), with the idea of "free speech" being considered foreign.

In fact, for an organization that is supposed to promote "human rights," the HRC’s agents seem curiously oblivious to basic aspects of constitutional law. In one famous exchange during the [Marc] Lemire case, [Dean] Steacy [HRC investigator] was asked "What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?" — to which he replied "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value." (I guess Section 2 has been excised from his copy of the Canadian Charter of Rights.)

If a photographer doesn’t want to take pictures at a same-sex commitment ceremony, but will get fined if she doesn’t, how soon before the First Amendment become a value-less concept within our own borders?

And this is not just a general free speech issue.  From the original article:

"[Vanessa] (Willock) had requested via e-mail for Elane Photography to conduct photography for her commitment ceremony, and the owner of Elane Photography responded that she would not perform that photography session because it was a same-sex commitment ceremony," [Carrie] Moritomo [public information officer for the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions] told Cybercast News Service .

No punitive monetary damages were awarded because Willock did not seek damages, Moritomo added.

Lorence said the Huenins, who are fervent evangelicals, politely declined the request because they did not want to use their art to disparage traditional heterosexual marriage. That should have been the end of the matter, he said.

"The Constitution prohibits the state from forcing unwilling people to promote a message they disagree with and thereby violate their conscience," Lorence said. "Christians should not be penalized for abiding by their beliefs.""

Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law School professor, constitutional scholar and contributor to the Volokh Conspiracy blog (where he’s blogged about this issue separately from the new story) is quoted, noting parallels to hypothetically requiring a freelance writer being forced to write for a pro-Scientology web site words that he does not believe in.  He also points out a bit of inconsistency.

"The law says that only when there is a ‘compelling government interest’ and applying the law is essential, only then can the government compel someone to violate their religious beliefs," Volokh said.

The fact that New Mexico does not recognize same-sex marriage makes it hard to argue that government has a compelling interest in protecting same-sex commitment, he added.

Human Rights Commissions are becoming less and less aptly named, and are instead becoming mere tools in the hands of liberal interest groups to silence dissent.  Where the legislative avenue doesn’t work, these commissions and activist judges are the Left’s next front to get their way in social law when the people are clearly against them.

Technorati Tags: New Mexico Human Rights Commission, free speech, Christianity, religion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, Elaine Huenins, Jon Huenins, "Vanessa Willock, Alliance Defense Fund, Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn, Eugene Volokh

They’re turning to Jesus in droves, as noted by Chuck Colson.

According to the website Islam Watch, in Russia, some two million ethnic Muslims converted to Christianity last year. Ten thousand French Muslims converted, as did 35,000 Turkish Muslims. In India, approximately 10,000 people abandoned Islam for Christianity.

In his book Epicenter, author Joel Rosenberg details amazing stories of Muslims converting to Christianity. In Algeria, the birthplace of St. Augustine, more than 80,000 Muslims have turned to Christ in recent years. This, despite the stiff opposition from Islamic clerics who have passed laws banning evangelism.

In Morocco, newspaper articles openly worry that 25,000 to 40,000 Muslims have become followers of Christ in recent years.

The stories are even more amazing in the heart of the Middle East. In 1996, the Egyptian Bible Society sold just 3,000 video copies of the JESUS film. In the year 2000, they sold an incredible 600,000 copies.

In Sudan, as many as five million Muslims have accepted Christ since the early 1990s, despite horrific persecution of Christians by the Sudanese government. What is behind the mass conversions? According to a Sudanese evangelical leader, “People have seen real Islam, and they want Jesus instead.”

Some say that America is creating terrorists by fight Islam.  But it appears that many, many more Muslims, seeing the hate from their fellow Muslims, have decided "they want Jesus instead". 

Technorati Tags: Chuck Colson, Joel Rosenberg, Christianity, Islam, Jesus film

During the debate some years ago over whether or not to continue to grant China "Most Favored Nation" trading status, the pro side of the argument included the idea that if we isolate China, their actions against Christians, and the religious in general, would get worse.  They could do it outside of the view of the world and would be unhindered by their watching eyes.  Keeping trade open would allow external influences to affect the culture.

I personally wasn’t convinced, but it was a reasonable argument.  So how’s it going there these days?

The violent protests in Tibet that began last week and have since spread across (and beyond) China are frequently depicted as a secessionist threat to Beijing. But the regime’s deeper problem in the current crisis is neither ethnic nor territorial. It’s religious.

If there’s a template for Beijing’s policy on religion, it’s the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." In 1995, the regime effectively kidnapped Gendun Choekyi Nyima, a 6-year-old boy named by the Dalai Lama as the 11th Panchen Lama, the second-highest ranking figure in Tibetan Buddhism. In Nyima’s place, Beijing designated its own "official" Panchen Lama, the slightly younger Gyaltsen Norbu. Nyima’s whereabouts, assuming he’s alive, are unknown. More recently, a new set of "implementation regulations" on Tibetan religious affairs has come into force, drastically curtailing the freedom of monks and nuns to travel within China, and introducing political themes into the qualification exams required of religious initiates. Of the roughly 100 Tibetan political prisoners, fully three-quarters are monks or nuns.

Much the same goes with China’s Christians. The regime has substituted its own Catholic hierarchy — the Catholic Patriotic Association — for Rome’s since 1957, leading to endless friction between the Pope and the Communist Party. Similarly, Chinese Protestantism officially operates under the so-called "Three-Self Patriotic Movement" (the three "selfs" being self-governance, self-support and self-propagation), which in turn is regulated by the party. "The purpose of [the regime’s] nominal degree of sympathy for Christianity is to indoctrinate and mobilize for Communist Party objectives," says journalist David Aikman, author of the 2003 book "Jesus in Beijing." "I’ve often joked that the most leftist people in China are members of the Three-Self Church."

I’m not really seeing how the world’s eyes have done much to curb government abuses in China.  Not even the arrival of the Olympics there has helped.  In fact, it’s possible that it’s causing more oppression so that the government puts it best facade forward. 

But there is good news…

Read the rest of this entry

The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty has, as it’s quick mission statement:

The Mission of the Acton Institute is to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles.

Among their web site’s many features is the Acton PowerBlog, and a podcast of the various lectures and radio appearances of Acton staff as well as their recently-started "Radio Free Acton" with a bit more production value (hosted by an old blogging friend of mine, Marc VanderMaas). 

Recently in the podcast stream was a talk by Acton President Rev. Robert Sirico entitled "The Rise (And Eventual Downfall) of the New Religious Left".  It is a 35 minute speech in which Rev. Sirico covers the fallacies of the Religious Left by noting history, scripture, and church writings.  He particularly notes the Left’s penchant for increasing the power of government (which history shows never ends well) in the name of caring, when the role of the church in society is to change hearts and allow human society to come naturally along. 

I’d like to suggest this quick listen those, both on the right and the left, who would like to hear a well-reasoned examination of the role of government in Christian charity.  (The page linked above has an embedded audio player.)