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Pastor Drops Gay Bombshell in Middle of Sunday Sermon 6:00AM EST 1/15/2016 JENNIFER LECLAIRE We're seeing 1 Timothy 4:1 playing out right before our very eyes. It's called the Great Apostasy and it's well underway. "At last I am choosing to serve in that role with full authenticity and as my genuine self—as a woman who loves and shares my life with another woman." Those were the words of Cynthia Meyer, a pastor at Edgerton United Methodist Church, who decided to make her first sermon of 2016 a coming out party. Meyer, 53, has been an ordained UM pastor for...

NEW YORK (AP) - Anglican leaders on Thursday temporarily restricted the role of the U.S. Episcopal Church in their global fellowship as a sanction over the American church's acceptance of gay marriage. Episcopalians have been barred for three years from any policy-setting positions in the Anglican Communion while a task force is formed that will try to reconcile conflicting views over sexuality in the 85-million-member family of churches. The Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the United States. The announcement came near the end of a weeklong meeting in Canterbury, England, called by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, to...

The Anglican Communion voted to censure its American branch, the Episcopal Church, during a meeting in Canterbury, England, called to reflect on the future of the communion. The vote Thursday (Jan. 14) to suspend the Episcopal Church from voting and decision-making for a period of three years was leaked a day ahead of a press conference that had been scheduled for Friday.

Vatican City, Jan 13, 2016 / 04:13 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The influential Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga has acknowledged the presence of a "gay lobby" in the Vatican. In a new interview, he says that Pope Francis has adopted a gradual approach to address it - and that Catholic teaching won't change. The Honduran newspaper El Heraldo asked the cardinal whether there actually was an attempted or successful "infiltration of the gay community in the Vatican." Cardinal Maradiaga responded: "Not only that, also the Pope said: there was even a 'lobby' in this sense." "Little by little the Pope is trying to...

Liberal Christianity - the bastard daughter of the Enlightenment... now there is a line you are not soon to forget. I wish I could say I had written it but I did not. And another one, well, several lines: Unlike either the Renaissance or the Reformation, the Enlightenment had begun not as an attempt to rescue some hallowed past, but as an assault on the past in the name of the future...It was a period which sought to overturn every intellectual assumption, every dogma, every 'prejudice' (a favourite term) that had previously exercised any hold over the minds of...

Tell us again how you love Jesus and support abortion. That’s what Reverend Harry Knox, leader of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) does on a regular basis. The head of the religious group that supports and promotes Planned Parenthood, and does so in the name of God, wants to be sure that in the season that Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus, his group of religious leaders would have supported the right to abort the Christ-child. In a letter to the RCRC’s email list this month, Knox wrote: Thank God for abortion providers. Thank God for all the...

The Rev. Franklin Graham quitting the Republican Party poses a significant blow to the GOP's 2016 White House aspirations, especially if other evangelical pastors follow suit and their millions-plus congregations stay away from the polls. Graham suggested earlier this week that the last straw was congressional Republicans funding Planned Parenthood in the recently passed, $1.8 trillion tax-and-spending package, despite revelations about the group harvesting fetal tissue. However, he made clear Wednesday night that the funding was only part of the reason he left the GOP to become an independent. "It's not just that," Graham said on Fox News' "On the...

To be clear, Christmas in the United States, despite the name, has very little to do with Jesus Christ and everything to do with consumerism and gift giving. However, side by side with Easter, it’s also the time when we are most likely to see depictions of Jesus used as tools of white supremacy. In Atlanta, I see them everywhere I go. Jesus as a blond-haired, blue-eyed baby and his blue-eyed supermodel mother are ubiquitous and done without even a slight hint of humor. It's preposterous. It would truly be no different from depicting Christopher Columbus as a dark-skinned African...

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama delivered a videotaped Christmas message to the nation yesterday. In this message, the president said: "Today, like millions of Americans and Christians around the world, our family celebrates the birth of Jesus and the values He lived in his own life." The president and his family are on vacation in Hawaii. The last piece of legislation he signed was on Dec. 18. It was the omnibus spending bill, which permits funding of Planned Parenthood. ...

In August 1980, Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan stood before a crowd of 15,000 evangelicals in Dallas, Texas, and declared: “I know you can’t endorse me. But...I want you to know that I endorse you.” Shortly thereafter, various leaders of what would become known as the religious right would endorse Reagan, and their support would help make him the 40th president of the United States. In December 2015, several dozen religious right leaders gathered yet again—this time in secret, at a Sheraton hotel outside Washington, D.C.—to determine which candidate would earn their endorsement. After four rounds of balloting, one candidate...

A couple of weeks ago, before a "moderate Muslim" couple lit up San Bernardino, a duo, by the way, that BHO's boys "vetted" to immigrate into the US, I read a column telling Christians not to vote for Trump should he win the GOP ticket because he didn't pass the "Word of God" litmus test. The Christian writer said evangelicals shouldn't support The Donald primarily because Trump mocked the disabled NYT reporter Serge Kovaleski. That, for said writer, was a holy deal breaker. He also pointed out that Trump was cocky, cheeky and braggadocious and that, my dear brethren, was...

Acceptance of homosexuality is rising across the broad spectrum of American Christianity, including among members of churches that strongly oppose homosexual relationships as sinful, according to an extensive Pew Research Center survey of U.S. religious beliefs and practices.

Evangelical leaders are urging fellow Christians to welcome refugees from Syria and Iraq despite opposition by many governors and presidential candidates. Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Assemblies of God, World Relief and other Christian groups said they would not surrender to fears surrounding the issue. ...

A group of liberal clergy and religious leaders are calling on Texas Governor Greg Abbot to reverse his decision to revoke taxpayer funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business. Abbott’s administration cut taxpayer funding for the abortion company after it was caught selling the body parts of aborted babies, though Planned Parenthood is fighting in court to keep taxpayers on the dole. “The gruesome harvesting of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood will not be allowed in Texas, and the barbaric practice must be brought to an end,” Abbott said at the time. The signers (some listed below) of the...

In a development that few Episcopalians of four or five years ago could have imagined, the Episcopal bishops of the most powerful and financially secure dioceses have begun to turn on their own once-strong, but now severely weakened, parishes. Having driven out all the dissenters at enormous expense to their coffers, these dioceses are increasingly trying to make up their losses by sacrificing valuable real estate -- even if it means turning out previously loyal congregations from their hard-won property. And -- who could have foreseen it? -- the parishes most harmed by the continuous litigation were precisely those with...

The historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church known as the “Cathedral of the Confederacy” has begun removing all images of the Confederate flag from within its walls. The measure includes six plaques with various versions of the Confederate flag, the church’s coat of arms with the flag on kneelers at the high altar, and bookplates in some books in the church’s library. The coat of arms will be retired, and the church will start to dig deeper in its history, the role of race and slavery in that history, and how parishioners can engage in conversations about race in the Richmond...

Let us share a trend from Christian Action Network’s Facebook page, where supporters “Like” the things we do and haters bombard us with profanity and/or insults. When we announced our recent petition drive to keep Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe from settling Syrian refugees in our home state (it’s still open; sign it here), the negative reactions all had a similar tone: that we are “unchristian” for opposing a huge, hasty and very political importation of strangers into our midst from a region known for terrorism and extremist violence. Here are some choice examples: How Christian of you.. WWJTA? (Who would...

The conversation surprised me. I was recently meeting with about a dozen members of a church that was on the precipice of closing. During their perceived "good old days," the average worship attendance was in the 40s and 50s. Now the church attendance was in the teens. The church was on metaphorical life support. I shared with them some items of urgency that might give them some glimmer of hope. So I was surprised when one of the members asked me a question that seemed to come from nowhere: "Will we have to sing from screens instead of hymnals?" she...

So I guess the Syrian refugee crisis is the latest complex issue we're supposed to pretend to have all figured out. Well, perhaps against my better judgment, I'm going to admit that I don't have it figured out, exactly. To be honest, I hadn't even thought much about refugee policy until very recently. I haven't spent very much time studying the legal and moral arguments for and against the various different sides. I haven't investigated the theological justifications for all of the possible positions on the subject. I'm not an expert by any means. What I know about the relevant...

Many around me in the coffee shop nodded in agreement in support of welcoming Christian refugees and rejecting those of other faiths. It fits their narrative that they should help persecuted Christians. After all, despite the fact that American Christians are the most entitled and privileged people in the history of the planet, many feel persecuted.One of the more endearing customs of many of our small town Iowa churches on Sunday morning is story time. The pastor welcomes elementary and pre-school aged kids up front, where he or she sits with the children, and shares a parable. Often the pastor...