TODAY IN GOD:
RELIGION NEWS BITES FOR YOUR SNACKING PLEASURE
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Romney (Over)Reaches to the Christian Right

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) did not discuss his Mormon faith as he continued his outreach Saturday to conservative Christians in a graduation speech at Regent University, the school founded by televangelist Pat Robertson.

Instead, Romney, who is intensely courting this key segment of the Republican base in hopes of winning the party’s 2008 presidential nomination, expounded on conservative themes such as the importance of child-rearing and marriage and the presence of evil in the world.

“There is no work more important to America’s future than the work that is done within the four walls of the American home,” Romney said. He also criticized people who choose not to get married because they enjoy the single life.

“It seems that Europe leads Americans in this way of thinking,” Romney told the crowd of more than 5,000. “In France, for instance, I’m told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past.”

And he twice referred to the Virginia Tech shootings on April 16 in which a gunman killed 32 people before killing himself.

“We’re shocked by the evil of the Virginia Tech shooting,” Romney said. “I opened my Bible shortly after I heard of the tragedy. Only a few verses, it seems, after the Fall, we read that Adam and Eve’s oldest son killed his younger brother. From the beginning, there has been evil in the world.”

He added: “Pornography and violence poison our music and movies and TV and video games. The Virginia Tech shooter, like the Columbine shooters before him, had drunk from this cesspool.”

Robertson, who has not endorsed any of the 2008 presidential candidates, called Romney an “outstanding American.”

It was Romney’s second appearance at Regent University in the past four months.
FOR THE FULL STORY (WASHINGTON POST) WITHOUT GG’S SNARKY COMMENTS CLICK HERE

Don’t set ‘thou shalts’ in public stone, Adventists say
CHICAGO — Wearing red T-shirts depicting two stone tablets and the slogan “Put them back in hearts and minds,” Rev. Jose Bourget and a dozen more Seventh-day Adventists descended on Daley Plaza on Friday to hand out booklets titled “Ten Commandments Twice Removed.”

They also invited passersby to go to the Arie Crown Theater this weekend for two days of preaching that will pay tribute to each of the 10 “thou shalts,” celebrating the notion of God’s guidance carved in stone.

Yet the Adventists don’t think the tablets should be displayed in courthouses and schools, a cause adopted with enthusiasm by other religious groups.

On the contrary, they believe the 10 Commandments provide life’s most reliable and enduring road map and therefore should be posted primarily in the heart.

So as other Christian and Jewish leaders assemble in Washington for the second straight year to support placing the commandments on government buildings, Adventists are hoping to counter that effort with a different perspective.

“God’s commandments are 10 promises of what he will empower us to do if we permit him to work in our hearts,” said Shelley Quinn, a program director for Hinsdale-based Three Angels Broadcasting, the Adventist TV network sponsoring the Arie Crown event. “It’s up to the church, not the government, to restore support for them by writing them in our hearts and putting them into practice.”

The separate but simultaneous events underscore how people of faith still disagree on how to commemorate the commandments, a debate that reached fever pitch when Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was ousted in 2003 for refusing to remove two-ton granite tablets from the state courthouse.
FOR THE FULL STORY (By the lovely and talented Manya Brachear in the CHICAGO TRIBUNE) CLICK HERE

It’s an in-your-faith chasm:
She is Mormon. He is evangelical Christian…
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – On Sundays after church, Tom and Libit Jones head to the beach. Together, they scout for seashell treasures: cat’s paws and worms.

Hand in hand, visors slung low, arms wrapped around each other, they stop to smooch as the sun starts its slow slip down.

Their public affection camouflages a deep divide.

Tom, 63, is an evangelical Christian, raised in a Kentucky Southern Baptist church. Libit, 52, is Mormon, raised in a Texas congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Both consider themselves faithful Christians who believe in Jesus Christ and the promise of eternal life. Both want the other to convert. But Tom runs Christian Research & Counsel, a ministry designed to educate the public about what he calls “counterfeits of Christianity.”
The Mormon Church

Theologically, Mormonism – the so-called Çhurch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ is a cult of Christianity.

Given that the theology and practice of the Mormon Church violates essential Christian doctrines, Mormonism does not represent historical, Biblical Christianity, is not a Christian denomination, and is not in any way part of the Christian church.

His work focuses on Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“My purpose is not to make my wife look foolish or any Mormon look foolish,” said Tom, a retired graphic designer who runs the ministry from their home. “It’s my job to try to lead them to Christ. …Obviously, my goal is to see my wife experience eternal life.”

Libit, a painter and art teacher, has learned to deal.

“Tom feels like he’s been called to this ministry, ” she said. “And if I believe he is trying to follow Christ and live a Christ-like life, then I can’t argue with him on that.”
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Norwegian imams red card friendly soccer card match with women clergy
OSLO (AFP) – A football match between Muslim and Christian clergy aimed at bringing together the two religions was cancelled on Saturday after the imams refused to play against women, the organisers said.

“For the past two days, everything seemed to be going fine and then the Muslims finally decided it would be impossible to play against female ministers and risk physical contact,” Olav Fykse Tveyt, one of the leaders of the Norwegian Protestant church, told AFP.

The match was planned as part of a religious conference in Oslo entitled “Shoulder to Shoulder.”

According to the Norwegian press agency NTB, the church tried to resolve the issue by asking its female ministers to play in trousers and baggy tops.

When that failed, it said they should not play at all, but this provoked outrage from the women and the team captain resigned.

“Not everything is negative,” said Fykse Tveyt. “Both sides have learned to better understand our cultures and we have had an open discussion.”
SOURCE: AFP VIA UK YAHOO NEWS
Malaysian state to hire ‘ghostbusters’
KUALA LUMPUR: Religious authorities in a Malaysian state plan to hire “ghostbusters” to drive out evil spirits believed to have caused Muslims to follow deviant groups, a report said Friday.

The move came after some enforcement officers with the Islamic Affairs Department in northeast Kelantan state were sent out to investigate cult groups but ended up becoming their followers instead, The Star newspaper said.

“Perhaps meals or drinks served to the officers were spiked,” the state’s Islamic department director Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahman was quoted as saying.
Malaysia

While Malaysia has a secular legal system, the country is ruled by a ‘moderate’ Muslim majority.

“Muslims in Malaysia come under the purview of religious courts that are not part of the secular federal legal system. Any attempt to deviate from Islamic teachings, or to leave the religion, can bring harsh penalties from the religious courts.” [Source]

“Otherwise, it does not make sense how a person with strong faith can easily be overcome by deviant teachings. This is where exorcism may be needed to flush out the unhealthy elements through spiritual Islamic techniques,” he said.

The ghostbusters, also known as “devil doctors” by local residents, are well versed in the Quran and draw inspiration from its verses to exorcise evil spirits, the report said.
FOR THE FULL STORY (TIMES OF INDIA) CLICK HERE

Democrats find religion on the campaign trail
WASHINGTON — This time it may be the Democrats who are getting religion.

Former Sen. John Edwards invoked “My Lord” in the first Democratic presidential debate when asked about moral influences on his life. At a campaign event on the day of the Virginia Tech massacre, he offered a prayer and — in a pointed break from Democratic candidates’ usual wariness of offending religious minorities — closed with the words “in Christ’s name.”

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) comfortably works in references to his faith at public appearances. Even before his presidential candidacy, he gave a well-received speech arguing for a greater role for religion in politics and cultivated relationships with influential church leaders, including mega-church pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) included a paragraph about faith in the official biography on her campaign Web site. And in her Senate re-election campaign last year, she drew notice in the New York press for wearing a cross at some public events.

Reversing recent political history, it’s the leading Republican candidates who for various reasons have so far been reluctant to speak too much about matters of faith.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a divorced Catholic, holds liberal views on abortion and gay rights. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a divorced Episcopalian, has a tense relationship with leaders of the Religious Right. And former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is a devout Mormon whose religion arouses suspicion among many evangelicals.

“Give the advantage to the Democrats at this point,” said Rich Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. “You would have to conclude that the Democrats have a lot more interest in faith than the Republicans based on what they’ve had to say.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (CHICAGO TRIBUNE) CLICK HERE

Catching Up With Jim Bakker, 20 Years Later

Twenty years ago, Jim Bakker was a man in exile.

Banished from the televangelism empire he founded near Charlotte, N.C. Toppled from power by moral indiscretion and accusations of financial improprieties. Hounded by reporters, day and night. Abandoned by fellow preachers, followers and even friends from his childhood growing up in Muskegon, Mich.

“My whole world,” he said, “collapsed.”

In 1987, Bakker resigned as an ordained minister in the Assemblies of God after it was revealed he had paid $265,000 in alleged “hush money” to a former church secretary, Jessica Hahn, after a sexual encounter with her seven years earlier. The scandal came with heavy consequences. Bakker stepped down as president and board chairman of the PTL (Praise The Lord) television ministry and was forced to leave Heritage USA — a 2,500-acre Christian retreat and theme park he had designed and founded in Charlotte, N.C.

He and his then-wife, Tammy Faye Bakker (now Messner), fled with their two children to a home in Palm Springs, Calif., where they sought refuge from everyone but their closest and most trusted colleagues.

It was, he says, a public fall from grace for which he still seeks forgiveness.
“I apologize,” Bakker said in a telephone interview, nearly 20 years to the day after his resignation. “I am so sorry. If I’ve ever hurt (anyone) or embarrassed you because of my failures, I say please forgive me.”

Bakker is now 67 and living in Branson, Mo. After being off the air for 16 years, Bakker and his second wife, Lori Bakker, launched a new television ministry — “The Jim Bakker Show” — from Branson in 2003.

“The amazing thing is I’m back on television,” he said. “It’s what I know, what I do. It’s my calling.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (RELIGION NEWS SERVICE VIA CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER) CLICK HERE