Compassionate Christ centred care
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A dozen states could vote on the issue come November. Rosie Villegas-Smith was spending a Saturday handing out flyers with volunteers from Voces Unidas, a pro-life nonprofit, when she noticed a group gathering signatures.The woman who approached her never mentioned the word abortion, only referring to women’s rights, but she quickly realized what they were campaigning for: a ballot measure on expanding abortion access in Arizona in the November elections.The southwestern state is one of up to a dozen across the country who will vote on abortion later this year, part of the continued reshaping of the legal landscape following the reversal of Roe v. Wade.Arizona’s measure would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution, overriding its current 15-week ban and allowing the procedure at any point in a pregnancy if a health care provider determines it is necessary to protect either the life or the physical and mental health of the mother.The state has been in a back-and-forth over abortion policies for weeks, with pro-life groups ramping up efforts to reach out to women who may be considering abortions and to voters who may consider supporting expanding abortion access.Last month, Arizona’s top court ruled that an 1864 law prohibiting abortion could go into effect as a result of the reversal of Roe v. Wade. The controversial ruling came under fire nationally; even former president Donald Trump and other high-profile Republicans suggested it went too far. Vice President Kamala Harris slammed the law as putting women in a “state of chaos and cruelty caused by Donald Trump.”A legislative repeal narrowly passed the state Senate 16–14 after two Republicans crossed the aisle to side with Democrats. ...Continue reading...
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Postliterate people still need God's Word, and online Bible ventures have found eager listeners.Suppose you agree that ours is an increasingly postliterate age. The average person, including the average Christian, is reading less, and Christians of all ages, especially the young, lack the basics of biblical literacy. Is that all there is to say? Is hunger for Scripture simply dying out?By no means. Of all tech pessimists I may be chief, yet few things excite me more than what’s happening online with the Bible. What we see is not declining interest in Scripture but an explosion of it. The question is not, therefore, whether people still need and actively seek nourishment from God’s Word but how best to get it to them.Let me share a snapshot of some promising attempts to give an answer—to meet the world’s deep hunger with the pleasures, depths, and inexhaustible beauties of the Word of God. Call them “digital lectors.” In the preliterate era, most believers never read the Bible for themselves but heard it read aloud in the gathered assembly of worship. Those who read the Word were called lectors, which is Latin for “readers” and a term still used in liturgical traditions.Online, new lectors are meeting the moment, presenting the Bible in fresh and creative ways. Sometimes, in a lovely closing of the ancient circle, they aren’t explaining or expounding the text, just reading it aloud. Either way, people are listening.Let me begin with three overarching themes before turning to specific examples. The first and happiest thing to say about these online Bible ventures is that they are ecumenical. Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox are all rising to the occasion, using a mix of audio, video, and animation. So far as I can tell, there is little ...Continue reading...
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Liberty University Chancellor Jonathan Falwell said thousands of students and faculty gathered on campus to fellowship, read scripture, and worship […]
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After years of disagreement and the departure of thousands of churches, the change passed without debate.United Methodists meeting for their top legislative assembly Wednesday overwhelmingly overturned a measure that barred gay clergy from ordination in the denomination, a historic step for the nation’s second-largest Protestant body.With a simple vote call and without debate, delegates to the General Conference removed the ban on the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals”—a prohibition that dates to 1984.With that vote, the worldwide denomination of some 11 million members joins the majority of liberal Protestant denominations such as the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the United Church of Christ, which also ordain LGBTQ clergy.“We’ve singled out one group for discrimination for 52 years,” said Ken Carter, bishop of the Western North Carolina Conference. “And we’ve done that on an understanding of homosexuality whose origins came when it was understood to be a disease and a disorder.”That, he said, has now changed. “Increasingly,” he said, “people see that God’s spirit is in gay and lesbian people.”The morning vote on the motion was part of a larger series of calendar items voted on in bulk. They also included a motion barring superintendents, or overseers, from punishing clergy for performing a same-sex wedding or prohibiting a church from holding a same-sex wedding, though the actual ban on same-sex weddings in churches has yet to be voted on.The vote on the calendar items was 692–51, or about 93 percent in favor.After the vote, LGBTQ delegates and their allies gathered on the floor of the Charlotte Convention Center to sing, hug, cheer, and shed tears. ...Continue reading...
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Thousands of prayer gatherings will be held nationwide on Thursday to celebrate the National Day of Prayer, an annual observance that dates back to a 1952 law requiring the president to designate a day for Americans to turn to God in prayer.
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