Man Claims He Was Fired For Saying Homosexuality Wrong

A Massachusetts man says he has been fired from his sales position at the Logan Airport branch in Boston of Brookstone allegedly for telling a female manager that his Christian faith says homosexuality is wrong.

Peter Vadala was fired and the company says he violated a tolerance policy. But Vadala reports his dismissal came because he expressed his Christian view of homosexuality after a female manager made repeated references as she approached him four times during work hours to her plans to marry her lesbian partner.

“At the start of the day, she told me she was getting married. I told her ‘Congratulations,’ and asked, ‘Where’s he taking you on your honeymoon?” Vadala said.

“She replied that her partner was a ’she,’” he continued, “So I immediately tried to change the subject.

“I think she knew I was uncomfortable talking about it,” he continued. “But, she brought it up to me three more times during the day.

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Judge Rules In Favor Of Prayer Ban For School Officials

A federal judge on Friday approved a consent decree that calls for Santa Rosa County School District officials to stop promoting their religious beliefs in schools.

School officials now are prohibited from promoting or endorsing prayers during school functions and from organizing school functions at religious venues. The consent decree must be distributed to all employees.

“The court has ensured that decisions about religion will be left in the hands of families and faith communities and not public school officials,” said Benjamin Stevenson, an American Civil Liberties Union of Florida attorney based in Pensacola.

The ACLU and ACLU of Florida sued the district in August on behalf of two unnamed Pace High School students. The students claimed school officials regularly promoted religion and led prayers at school events.

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Obama Could Address Muslims From Top Mosque

The grand mufti of Egypt has invited President Obama to address Muslims around the globe from one of the most important mosques in the Islamic world.

The invitation to speak from Egypt’s Al Azhar mosque follows an announcement over this past weekend that Obama will travel to Egypt next month to deliver his promised address to the Muslim world.

According to Al-Masri Al-Yawm, a state-run Egyptian newspaper, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa and other scholars from Egypt’s Al Azhar University invited Obama to use the mosque as venue for the president’s upcoming visit, explaining it would promote a culture of dialogue between Islam and the West.

Al AZhar University is the most respected Sunni Islamic learning center in the world and is the second oldest degree-granting school in the world. Clerics at the university’s attendant mosque decide Islamic sharia law matters for Sunni Muslims internationally.

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Pope Stresses Deep Respect For Islam

Pope Benedict XVI underlined his “deep respect” for Islam on Friday in Jordan, on his first trip as pontiff to an Arab state, and stressed that religious freedom is a fundamental human right.

He also called the church a spiritual force that could contribute to progress in bringing about peace in the Middle East.

Speaking after a red carpet welcome from Abdullah II and Queen Rania at Queen Alia Airport as he began his eight-day tour of the Holy Land amid strict security, the pope said he came to Jordan “as a pilgrim.”

He said his visit “gives me a welcome opportunity to speak of my deep respect for the Muslim community, and to pay tribute to the leadership shown by His Majesty the King in promoting a better understanding of the virtues proclaimed by Islam.”

The pope also called religious freedom “a fundamental human right.”

“It is my fervent hope and prayer that respect for the inalienable rights and dignity of every man and woman will come to be increasingly affirmed and defended, not only throughout the Middle East, but in every part of the world,” he said.

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Survey: Israelis Like America, Distrust Obama

A recent survey conducted by Bar-Ilan University’s BESA Center in conjunction with the Anti-Defamation League reveals Israelis’ opinion about the United States relationship to the Jewish State.

The Israeli respondents, 57 percent of whom identified as secular, reported positive feelings toward America (72%), with a preponderance asserting that the United States is a loyal ally of Israel (68%).

The overwhelming majority of those polled trust that the United States would come to the aid of Israel in the event of an existential emergency (76%), with nearly all respondents believing close relations with America is vital to Israel’s security (91%).

However, Israeli confidence in the U.S president plummeted from surveys taken in 2007. While most Israelis considered President George W. Bush’s attitude toward Israel to be friendly (73%), President Barack Hussein Obama is considered friendly by only about a third of Israelis (38%).

The younger generation of Israelis is more skeptical about Obama than the older generation, with 41 percent of respondents aged 42 and over believing Obama is capable of making the right decisions regarding the Israeli-PA conflict, as opposed to only 32 percent of respondents under the age of 41.

In regard to whether Obama would maintain friendly relations with Israel, 41 percent of older respondents agreed he would, with only 34 percent of the younger respondents also agreeing.

A whopping 80 percent of opinion holders said that Obama’s plan to bring about reconciliation with the Arab world in order to improve the U.S.’s position and reputation would come at Israel’s expense.

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America A Mission Field

The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary says a recent article in Newsweek magazine about the decline of Christianity in America poses some challenges to believers. The cover story of the April 13, 2009, issue of Newsweek — titled “The End of Christian America” — points to studies that show the number of Americans who say they have no religious affiliation. For example, the American Religious Identification Survey found that the percentage of self-identified Christians has dropped by 10 percentage points since 1990.

Addressing the topic on his daily radio show, Dr. Albert Mohler, who was quoted in the Newsweek article, says Christians must take every opportunity to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“It’s easier to have an honest conversation with someone about Christianity who knows that he or she is not a Christian, than [to have a conversation with] someone who thinks they are because of some vague, family tie or cultural kind of alliance or allegiance,” he says. “But we’re now looking at an America that knows itself to be increasingly secular.”

Albert Mohler, Jr.Another challenge, says Mohler, is how many people view Christianity. Many, he believes, see Christianity as merely a moral system.

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Christian College Creates Homosexual Housing

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Faith of Conservatives, Liberals Differ Greatly

Social, political conservatives differ significantly Read more

Supporters of ‘Antichrist’ Minister Protest Miami-Dade Judges

Wearing white T-shirts emblazoned with ”666”, about a dozen followers of Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, the Miami-based minister who proclaimed himself the Antichrist, protested his ”persecution” by the justice system in front of the family courthouse on Tuesday.

Last year, after a bitter divorce that featured dueling claims of lesbianism and physical abuse, Miami-Dade judge Roberto Pineiro awarded more than $2.2 million to the minister’s ex-wife, Josefina de Jesus Torres.

In his ruling, Pineiro determined that de Jesus’ Growing in Grace church was a personal business, rather than a religious nonprofit, so the ex-wife was entitled to half of its assets.

Jo-Ann de Jesus, the minister’s daughter who also handles the church’s finances, said the judge based his decision on a ”prejudice against my dad” and not on evidence.

De Jesus and her father’s followers are hoping to get the multimillion dollar judgement overturned.

Pineiro could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.

The minister, who claimed his teachings have replaced those of Jesus Christ and therefore he should be known as the Antichrist, has refused to pay up.

He has been ”moving around a lot lately”, his daughter said, to avoid the arrest warrant issued against him for contempt.

”My father is afraid if he is captured, people will sell their houses to help him because they love him so much,” she said.

Many of de Jesus’ followers say his clash with the secular justice system is further proof that he is the Second Coming. The original Messiah also faced significant legal difficulties, they note.

”It just makes me more secure,” said 38-year-old de Jesus follower Angel Toro. “His persecution means he’s really divine.”

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Americans Calling Themselves Christians Drops 11% In One Generation

When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers.

The percentage. of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

“More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, ‘I’m everything. I’m nothing. I believe in myself,’ ” says Barry Kosmin, survey co-author.

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More Americans Say They Have No Religion

A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.

“No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state,” the study’s authors said.

In the Northeast, self-identified Catholics made up 36 percent of adults last year, down from 43 percent in 1990. At the same time, however, Catholics grew to about one-third of the adult population in California and Texas, and one-quarter of Floridians, largely due to Latino immigration, according to the research.

Nationally, Catholics remain the largest religious group, with 57 million people saying they belong to the church. The tradition gained 11 million followers since 1990, but its share of the population fell by about a percentage point to 25 percent.

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1 in 3 American Christians Say Jesus Sinned

Half of Americans who call themselves “Christian” don’t believe Satan exists and fully one-third are confident that Jesus sinned while on Earth, according to a new Barna Group poll.

Another 40 percent say they do not have a responsibility to share their Christian faith with others, and 25 percent “dismiss the idea that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches,” the organization reports.

Pollster George Barna said the results have huge implications.

“Americans are increasingly comfortable picking and choosing what they deem to be helpful and accurate theological views and have become comfortable discarding the rest of the teachings in the Bible,” he said.

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Survey – Americans Say Eternal Life Is Not Exclusively For Those Who Accept Christ

Most American religious believers, including most Christians, say eternal life is not exclusively for those who accept Christ as their savior, a new survey finds.

Of the 65% of people who held this open view of heaven’s gates, 80% named at least one non-Christian group — Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists or people with no religion at all — who may also be saved, according to a new survey released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

This means 52% of Christians do not agree with the doctrines many religions teach, particularly conservative denominations.

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, calls the findings “a theological crisis for American evangelicals. They represent at best a misunderstanding of the Gospel and at worst a repudiation of the Gospel.”

This survey on salvation is a follow-up to a highly controversial finding in Pew’s Religious Landscape survey, released earlier this year. It detailed the religious demographics, beliefs and behavior of 35,000 U.S. adults surveyed in 2007.

Pastors, theologians and Christian commentators complained that the Landscape Survey question on access to eternal life — which 70% said was open to many faiths — was too vague. “Did people mean only other religions that are similar to their own, like Baptists grudgingly admitting Lutherans might go to heaven?” said Pew research fellow Greg Smith.

So Pew revisited the topic in a new survey of 2,905 adults, conducted July 31-Aug. 10, with more specific questions. Smith says the new findings reinforce the original finding that “Americans really are thinking quite broadly.”

Christian believers who named at least one non-Christian faith that could lead to salvation included 34% of white evangelicals, even though evangelical doctrine stresses that salvation is possible only through Jesus.

via Source – USATODAY.com.

Emergent Church Leader Says Biblical Lifestyle Could Include Gays

One of the key leaders of today’s most cutting-edge church movement has opened an Internet discussion on the issue of same-sex marriage with the bold proclamation that he believes “gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and queer” individuals can and should live out their sexuality in – and blessed by – the Christian church.

“I now believe that GLBTQ can live lives in accord with biblical Christianity as least as much as any of us can,” writes author and church leader Tony Jones, “and that their monogamy can and should be sanctioned and blessed by church and state.”

Jones is an author and former youth pastor who holds a doctorate from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is also the national coordinator of Emergent Village, a loosely-formed friendship of churches that derive their descriptive name from having “emerged” from postmodernism to take the gospel of Jesus Christ into a post-Christian culture.

The “Emergent Church,” as these mostly young, community- and mission-driven congregations are collectively known, is criticized by some for being “theologically liberal,” praised by others as the best hope for passing the torch of Christianity to future generations.

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