Church Politics

Thousands of students at the world’s largest evangelical university on Wednesday kicked off a week filled with high-profile speakers, including “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade, to celebrate pro-life week.

The Pro-Life Conference, sponsored by Liberty University Student Government Association, began Wednesday morning with an address by Mathew Staver, dean of Liberty University School of Law, to more than 10,000 people in Lynchburg, Va.

Staver will also hold a lecture with a question and answer session on abortion and the courts later in the afternoon in the Supreme Courtroom at the School of Law. The school has the nation’s only replica of the U.S. Supreme Court’s nine-member bench. more >>

Christian conservative groups will be keeping a close watch over how new hate crimes legislation will be enforced after President Obama signed it into law Wednesday.

“Although we don’t know the full ramifications of this bill as of yet, my staff and I will be watching closely for any possible infringement on the rights of our members and pastors to speak out against the sin of homosexuality based on the Word of God,” said Dr. Gerald B. Kieschnick, president of The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, in a statement.

Like Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, Kieschnick said he doesn’t believe there will be “immediate” prosecution of pastors and churches for teaching that homosexual behavior is sinful, but the threat to free speech is “nonetheless real.” more >>

A group of churches in Texas that split from The Episcopal Church (TEC) is asking a civil court to dismiss a lawsuit that was filed against it last month by the U.S.-based church body and a diocese that shares its name.

In a 12-page motion, the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth asked the 141st District Court to take a “judicial notice,” arguing that a civil court lacks jurisdiction because in order to grant the plaintiffs’ requests it would be required to resolve an ecclesiastical dispute.

“If the legal and equitable relief sought from the Court can only be determined by deciding between competing interpretations of purely unambiguous ecclesiastical documents where plaintiffs seek to have the Court interpret ecclesiastical language, does the Court have subject-matter jurisdiction to grant the relief sought?” poses the motion filed Friday on behalf of the group. more >>

This year and the next few to come have many worried.

Though few economists expect the nation’s current economic downturn to become the sequel to the Great Depression of the last century, today's recession is already longer than all but two of the downturns since World War II, according to the economic research bureau.

And, as many pro-lifers and conservatives feared, President Barack Obama is on track to becoming the most pro-abortion president in the history of the nation, starting first with the repeal of the Mexico City Policy, which prohibited funding for overseas abortion providers, and most recently with his plans to lift restrictions on taxpayer-funded research using embryonic stem cells. more >>

President-elect Barack Obama has been without a worship community for about a year now and throughout that time, he says, it’s been difficult.

“Now, I've got a wonderful community of people who are praying for me every day, and they call me up and – you know, but it's not the same as going to church and the choir's going and you get a good sermon,” he said in an interview aired Sunday by ABC's "This Week."

Over the past year, Obama has been attending church sparingly and though it’s been nearly two weeks since he and his family arrived in Washington, the president-elect said they still don’t have a church to attend yet. more >>