The court’s ruling vacated and remanded to lower courts all the religious nonprofits’ cases challenging the Obamacare requirement that employers provide health coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients. It was a qualified victory and the best outcome the nonprofits could hope for if the court was divided 4-4 on the merits of the case—as seems likely.... Continue Reading

Dr. Old’s interests extended from Christian education, particularly with teenagers and special needs children, to art, architecture, and above all, worship. It is the importance of worship which sparked his desire to study further the history of worship. With this in mind he went to Europe, where for seven years he learned the principles applied... Continue Reading

“He says he’s going to withhold funding if schools do not follow the policy,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas said this month. “Well in Texas, he can keep his 30 pieces of silver. We will not yield to blackmail from the president of the United States.” On Wednesday, officials in other states used language... Continue Reading

But a certain sensation might arise in our own hearts when we tell someone else they’re wrong, a temptation to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think (Romans 12:3). Rebukes that search for that kind of self-gratifying, short-lived sensation will have their reward (Matthew 6:16). But when you rebuke, seek to set... Continue Reading

The six months would also be “enough time” for some critics within the church to “cool down and find answers.” But Adelaja’s Facebook and blog have remained active, and neither they nor the church’s website mentions the sabbatical. Several of those close to him have accused him of thwarting attempts to help or discipline.  ... Continue Reading

Fulgenzi was first involved with Forefront Church, which has dual locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and remains an active supporter. The congregation is affiliated with the Convergence Initiative, “a collective of Post-Evangelical, Progressive Evangelical, Non-Denominational and Free-Church tradition churches, organizations, leaders and networks,” as well as the Open Network, both of which are homosexual-affirming and... Continue Reading

Turning your patient into a man-pleaser may require employment of what we have come to call the “rope-a-dope” technique, outlined as follows: First, make things very comfortable in the church for your patient. When he is very much pleased with himself and neither sober nor watchful, but drunk on ease and set to pastoral autopilot,... Continue Reading

“Smith suspects the problem in the United States is not simply one of closed-mindedness from religious fundamentalists and dogmatic secularists, but also of geography — people living and working in enclosed communities where they don’t encounter people of different beliefs, so their own beliefs are never contested.”   In our new secular age, there are... Continue Reading

“Pentecostalism – whatever else it is – is a religion of the extraordinary and the new.  Its leaders at times find the pursuit of the exciting to be exhausting.  (Interestingly, Charles Grandison Finney, the apostle of excitement, warned in his Lectures on Revival that excitement long continued would be destructive.)”   In 1926 Aimee Semple... Continue Reading

“Luther himself endured many instances of depression. He described the experience in varied terms: melancholy, heaviness, depression, dejection of spirit; downcast, sad, downhearted. He suffered in this area for much of his life and often revealed these struggles in his works. Evidently he did not think it a shameful problem to be hidden.”   The... Continue Reading