Barna Backs Gingrich

January 12, 2012 By scotmcknight 17 Comments

From Barna’s FB page:

I [George Barna] am honored to announce that I have accepted the position of Co-Chairman of the national Faith Leaders Coalition for Newt Gingrich. After a lot of study, soul searching, and prayer, I felt that Speaker Gingrich is the best man for the job and I would like to help him get the Republican nomination. It will not be an easy battle for him, but neither will it be easy for the U.S. to regain its way in these challenging times. I believe Newt is the person best poised to lead us into that difficult and uncertain future.

If you would like to listen to a brief explanation of my decision, as well as a longer, very forthright conversation between Mr. Gingrich and pastor Jim Garlow regarding the race and Mr. Gingrich’s qualifications and “baggage,” you are invited to join us on a conference call this Thursday (Jan. 12) at 2:15pm Eastern (1:15pm Central, 12:15 Mountain, 11:15 Pacific). To be part of this informative, free event, simply dial in at 209-647-1600. Once on the line, enter the access code 826881# and you’ll be with us. The call should last about 45 minutes.

Filed Under: Public Issues 17 Comments

Good Coffee Shop News

January 12, 2012 By scotmcknight 7 Comments

From Good News, and it reminds of my former neighbor’s bumper sticker: Practice Random Acts of Kindness.

The main conceit of the 2000 Kevin Spacey film Pay It Forward is that if one person does a kindness for three strangers, and those three people each do kindnesses for three strangers, and so on, one person can change the world. Rarely do we see this acted out in the real world the way it was cinematically—one scene finds a man giving away his brand-new Jaguar to a guy having car troubles—but on a smaller scale, these sorts of random niceties happen far more often than you might think. Today, it’s selflessness at a small coffee house in Bluffton, South Carolina.

It all started two years ago at Corner Perk, a small, locally owned coffee shop, when a customer paid her bill and left $100 extra, saying she wanted to pay for everyone who ordered after her until the money ran out. The staff fulfilled her request, and the woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, has returned to leave other large donations every two to three months. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Coffee 7 Comments

Is Barbie Back?

January 12, 2012 By scotmcknight 5 Comments

This set of clips from Judith Woods will take some finesse to discuss, but here we go: Is the rise of plastic surgery for women an indicator that Barbie-dom is back?

Is there a woman alive over 40 who hasn’t stood in front of the mirror and pulled her brow upwards, her cheeks sideways or her décolletage inwards and wistfully admired the fleeting transformation, before gravity takes hold again?

It used to be a potent combination of common sense, cost and social stigma that stopped femmes d’un certain âge turning cosmetic surgery fantasies into reality. But no more.

An estimated million-plus women are resorting to medical procedures in a bid to, if not turn back time per se, then at the very least suspend it, one unnervingly immobilised wrinkle at a time.

The controversy over the removal and replacement of sub-standard breast implants has thrown a spotlight on to the extent to which women in Britain have come to rely on the surgeon’s knife for their sense of personal worth or professional marketability…. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized 5 Comments

GOP, Science, Technology Ratings

January 12, 2012 By scotmcknight 1 Comment

By Nicholas Thompson, who ranks the GOP candidates on the basis of their stances on science and technology. Here is the opening two paragraphs, with his rankings in order, but the ranks are each discussed at the New Yorker site:

The Republican Party has often been the party of science and technology. Abraham Lincoln created the National Academy of Sciences and earned a patent on shipping technology. The creationist Democrat William Jennings Bryan twice lost to the Republican William McKinley. Dwight Eisenhower was perhaps the most forceful Oval Office advocate for science and technology of the last century. By the nineteen-seventies, Republicans—particularly Richard Nixon—had begun to view scientists as agitating liberals. But through the Cold War, Republicans often backed the greatest scientific and technical schemes: from missile defense to the ARPANet.

Now, tragically, science has been made partisan, and the tech world, with its liberal Silicon Valley center, is headed that way. In 2003, Nicholas Lemann, writing for The New Yorker, asked Karl Rove to define a Democrat. “Somebody with a doctorate,” Rove said. “What was Daniel Bell’s phrase? The information class.” The divide, however, is not total. The Democrats still have their Bryans, and the Republicans still have their McKinleys. In the spirit of giving the most pro-science and pro-tech members of the G.O.P. their due, here’s a ranking of the six remaining Presidential candidates:

Gingrich
Huntsman
Romney
Paul
Perry
Santorum

 

Filed Under: Public Issues, Science and Faith 1 Comment

Testing Scripture on Creation and Fall (RJS)

January 12, 2012 By RJS 123 Comments

Any discussion of the interface of science and scripture will eventually come to Genesis 1-3 creation and fall. The centrality of this discussion was obvious in the comments after the post on Tuesday Pastors Unconvinced … Now What? and the brief post yesterday Science, Evolution, and the Bible. Dr. John Polkinghorne gives an overview of his approach to creation and fall in chapter three his book  Testing Scripture: A Scientist Explores the Bible.

Dr. Polkinghorne, before he entered into the Anglican priesthood, was a very successful scientist, a theoretical physicist involved in the discovery of quarks and Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University. His view of the Christian faith takes the information learned through the scientific study of creation very seriously. We have, he finds, very good reason to believe that the universe is ~13.7 billion years old, having begun as an almost uniform expanding ball of energy. The earth developed out of this through the generation of stars producing heavier elements some 4.6 billion years ago. Life developed from single-celled organisms into the vast diversity of species we see today in a process that began something like 3.5 billion years ago (a rough estimate). Biological death was part of creation from the very origin of life itself.

How then does Dr. Polkinghorne approach Genesis 1-3 and Romans 5?

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Adam, Bible, Science and Faith Tagged With: 123 Comments

Mission vs. Mandate

January 12, 2012 By scotmcknight 15 Comments

I picked this post up from a pastor who gave me permission to run it here. He distinguishes our mandates from our mission. Give it a good read and we can discuss it here.

For some readers of this blog, the issues that I’m about to raise aren’t on your radar, and may hardly stir any interest much less any controversy. If you’re one of them, feel free to take a nap while pretending to read this unusually long (even for me) post. Other people may be aware that the issues I’m raising are related to why the larger church of Christ, including the Reformed Church in America, is so divided. I expect that some of my good friends, people whose ministries I respect and appreciate, will disagree with me. I hope to learn from their responses (if any of them happen to read this).

The word “missional” is an adjective that’s used a lot these days. Any church that’s really “the church” is supposed to be missional. I like the word, and would agree that if a church isn’t missional… well, let’s just say it has a lot of explaining to do.

What do you think of the distinction between mission and mandate, and the big one: What would you assign to “mission” and “mandates”?

What does it mean to be missional? I sense that we usually use the word to refer to churches that are outward focused, engaging in ministry with and for people outside the church. The meaning is that general and that vague. I get the impression that what the mission is matters less than having a mission. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Missional 15 Comments