Survey: 4 in 10 say Clergy should Endorse Candidates

Four in 10 Americans believe that religious leaders should be permitted to endorse political candidates from the pulpit without risking their organization's tax-exempt status, a new survey by the First Amendment Center shows. Twenty-two percent of respondents "strongly" agreed and 18% "mildly" agreed that religious leaders should be able to make such endorsements, which are currently prohibited by IRS regulations. In comparison, 39% strongly disagreed, 15% mildly disagreed and 6% didn't know or refused to answer. When asked to name specific rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, just 15% mentioned religion, the lowest percentage to recall that topic since 2000. Asked if Americans have too much or too little religious freedom, 6% said they had too much, 28% said they had too little and 62% said they had about the right amount. Asked about freedom of worship, 54% said the concept applies to all religious groups regardless of how extreme their beliefs may be. In comparison, 29% said it was never meant to apply to religious groups that the majority of people consider to be extreme. Asked about freedom of worship, 54% said the concept applies to all religious groups regardless of how extreme their beliefs may be. In comparison, 29% said it was never meant to apply to religious groups that the majority of people consider to be extreme.

• JJ Commentary: Our beloved country has moved so far from its constitutional and Christian foundations, that today’s electorate is totally muddled in their opinions. With no clear majorities regarding religious freedoms, we will continue to see vocal and well-financed minorities impose their extreme beliefs on us all.

Amid Dwindling Numbers, Megachurches Seek the 'Seekers'

USA TODAY: After decades of soaring growth, the phenomenon of Protestant megachurches — behemoths of belief where 2,000 to 20,000 or more people attend weekend worship — may be stalled. And Willow CreekCommunity Church in South Barrington, Ill., the granddaddy of "seeker-sensitive" megachurches geared to attract the spiritually curious, is on a mission to rev the engines. On paper, megachurches look like a trend still on the rise. Their total number rose from 600 in 2000 to more than 1,250 in 2005, says sociologist Scott Thumma of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in Hartford, Conn. On Outreach magazine's 2008 list of the largest 100, even the smallest says more than 7,000 people attend. But some of the biggest, including Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston, with 43,500, showed slight declines.

Experts see more troubling concerns than slowing growth: No measurable inroads on overall church attendance and signs that many churchgoers are spectators, not driving toward a deeper faith. "You can create a church that's big, but is still not transforming people. Without transformation, the Christian message is not advanced," says Ed Stetzer, head of Lifeway Research in Nashville, which did the Outreach study. The unchurched remain untouched. While the number of people who say they attend at least once a week hovers around 30% year after year, the number who say they "never" go to church climbs. The tally of "Nevers" varies from 16% in Gallup surveys to 22% in the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, to 32% in an Ellison Research survey this year. In response, founder and senior pastor Bill Hybels has changed his sermons to more directly challenge worshipers at every level. Willow has launched a slate of dozens of Wednesday mini-classes focusing on spiritual growth, coached and mentored by the church.

• JJ Commentary: Instead of struggling to draw the “nevers” inside, the church needs to take the gospel out into the marketplace where the unbelievers are. Then, services need to involve the spectators in a participatory process of true transformation.

Americans Have Difficulty Defining 'Evangelical'

A new survey finds that many Americans can't define the term "evangelical Christian." The survey -- conducted by Ellison Research -- finds that although evangelical is a term heard often in news reports and the culture, many Americans struggle to define the term. Thirty-six percent of Americans said they had no idea what an evangelical Christian is; and nine percent said evangelicals were a specific type of Christian, such as non-denominational, born-again, or Protestant. The study also found that only six percent define evangelicals by worldview or political persuasion. Ron Sellers, president of Ellison Research, was surprised by the animosity many hold for evangelicals. “We were not asking people what they think about evangelicals. We were simply asking them to define evangelicals -- and yet people used terms like idiots, nut cases, delusional, illiterate, simpleton, screaming loons," he lists. "We were told by one person that they're much more conservative in their beliefs and they tend to be less intelligent than the more moderate Christians.”

According to Webster’s online dictionary, “evangelical” means: “of, relating to, or being in agreement with the Christian gospel especially as it is presented in the four Gospels… emphasizing salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ through personal conversion, the authority of Scripture, and the importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual… marked by militant or crusading zeal.”

Amish Population Nearly Doubles in 16 Years

In spite of relatively little outreach, the United States' Amish population has grown from an estimated 123,000 in 1992 to an estimated 227,000 today, Associated Press reports. This growth in population has led to an exodus extending far beyond their traditional homes as they journey to affordable farmland in seven new states since 1992. "When we think they might be dying out or merely surviving, they are actually thriving," said Elizabethtown professor Don Kraybill, a leading expert on the Amish who shared his research from an upcoming book with The Associated Press. Most of the growth comes from birth and retention rates; most Amish couples have at least five children, and more than four out of five decide to stay within the church.

Tithing Down

A recent poll by pollster George Barna shows that only 5% of Americans say they tithe, or give at least 10% of their income to religious congregations and charitable groups. According to other studies on church giving, congregants give an average of 2.58% of their income to their churches. That's down from 3.11% of their income in 1968, according to studies published by Empty Tomb, a ministry that studies church finances. "Tithing is in decline," said the Rev. William Hull, a research professor at Samford University and a Baptist minister. "The older generation was taught to tithe. It's not being taught very much any more."

Decades ago, the church was a focal point of philanthropy. Now parachurch ministries, schools and charitable agencies compete for those dollars, he said. "The church has been losing market share," said Sylvia Ronsvalle, executive vice president of Empty Tomb. "That concerns us. There could be a crisis in the very heart of the church." Many major mainline denominations are suffering budget shortfalls. "The churches don't get enough money to send on to headquarters," Hull said.

Ø JJ Commentary: Maybe tithing would increase if the churches spent less on fancy buildings and were more Biblically sound.

Huge Shift for Mega-Church

According to a Christianity Today story, Willow Creek Community Church, after modeling a seeker-sensitive approach to church growth for three decades, now plans to gear its services toward mature believers seeking to grow in their faith. Since 1975, Willow Creek has avoided conventional church approaches, attempting to reach the unchurched through polished music, multimedia, and sermons referencing popular culture. Last summer, executive pastor Greg Hawkins co-authored a book titled, Reveal: Where Are You?, which detailed much of Willow Creek's four-year research effort into whether the church's model had been effective or not. Hawkins declined CT's interview request, and senior pastor Bill Hybels was unavailable for comment. Greg Pritchard, author of Willow Creek Seeker Services, told CT the church "sporadically has recognized it was not teaching a robust enough biblical theology and needed to turn the ship around. It is a huge shift."

Pope Exonerates Luther

An article in the London Times states that Pope Benedict XVI is to rehabilitate Martin Luther, arguing that he did not intend to split Christianity but only to purge the Church of corrupt practices. The Pope will issue his findings on the reformer in September after discussing him at his annual seminar of 40 fellow theologians at the papal summer residence. Vatican insiders say Benedict will argue that Luther, who was excommunicated and condemned for heresy, was not a heretic, a move which Cardinal Walter Kasper said would help to promote ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Protestants. Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X, who dismissed him initially as "a drunken German who will change his mind when sober."

• JJ Commentary: Not that Luther or Protestants need exoneration and rehabilitation, but it is noteworthy that Catholicism continues to purge itself of historically unscriptural acts and positions.

Changing Church Venues

The Christian Post reports that new survey has broken down America's church attendance to reflect the growing number of "church" options that have redefined how Christians worship on Sunday. American Christians are increasingly adopting house churches, marketplace ministries and cyberchurches as places of worship and ministry. The new Barna survey, released Monday, contends that popular measures about who is "unchurched" are out of date. "The fact that millions of people are now involved in multiple faith communities -- for instance, attending a conventional church one week, a house church the next, and interacting with an online faith community in-between -- has rendered the standard measures of "churched" and "unchurched" much less precise," The Barna Group noted.

• JJ Commentary: As government further muzzles the Church to restrict the preaching and teaching of the full gospel (e.g. homosexuality, political issues), it will be the larger, traditional churches that will suffer the most. The end-times Remnant will increasingly meet in smaller, non-traditional venues.
  

Spiritual Treason

The United Methodist Church is being criticized for its alliance with a pro-abortion coalition, OneNewsNow.com reports. The pro-abortion group The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, which is supported by the UMC among other mainline denominations, spoke out against the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the ban on partial-birth abortion. Mark Tooley with the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) says "the officers and the bureaucrats and the theologians of many of these mainline denominations heed the demands of feminist theology and the very aura of the sexual revolution."

• JJ Commentary: The erosion of God’s absolute truth within mainline denominations is aiding and abetting the enemy and amounts to spiritual treason. Jesus said we are either for Him or against Him. It would appear that mainline denominations are at risk of incurring His wrath

Deadly Deceptions

JERUSALEM — A prominent scholar looking into the factual basis of a popular but widely criticized documentary film that claims to have located the tomb of Jesus said Tuesday that a crucial piece of evidence filmmakers used to support their claim is a mistake. Stephen Pfann, a textual scholar and paleographer at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, said he has released a paper claiming the makers of The Lost Tomb of Jesus were mistaken when they identified an ancient ossuary from the cave as belonging to the New Testament's Mary Magdalene. The filmmakers also suggest that Mary Magdalene was buried in the tomb, that she and Jesus were married, and that an ossuary labeled "Judah son of Jesus" belonged to their son.

The scholars who analyzed the Greek inscription on one of the ossuaries after its discovery read it as "Mariamene e Mara," meaning "Mary the teacher" or "Mary the master." Before the movie was screened, Jacobovici said that particular inscription provided crucial support for his claim. The name Mariamene is rare, and in some early Christian texts it is believed to refer to Mary Magdalene. But having analyzed the inscription, Pfann, who made a brief appearance in the film as an ossuary expert, published a detailed article on his university's website asserting that it doesn't read "Mariamene" at all.

The inscription, Pfann said, is made up of two names inscribed by two different hands: the first, "Mariame," was inscribed in a formal Greek script, and later, when the bones of another woman were added to the box, another scribe using a different cursive script added the words "kai Mara," meaning "and Mara." Mara is a different form of the name Martha. According to Pfann's reading, the ossuary did not house the bones of "Mary the teacher," but rather of two women, "Mary and Martha." "In view of the above, there is no longer any reason to be tempted to link this ossuary...to Mary Magdalene or any other person in Biblical, non-Biblical or church tradition," Pfann wrote.

• JJ Commentary: Satan will use any excuse to cast doubt on Jesus’ resurrection because that is the linchpin of Christianity.

Assault on Christianity

The Oscar-winning director of "Titanic" is expected to announce in a news conference tomorrow that his next film project is a documentary suggesting Jesus wasn't resurrected, was married to Mary Magdalene and had a son. James Cameron is producing "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," claiming the discovery of 10 stone coffins in a Jerusalem suburb in 1980 is actually the family crypt of Jesus of Nazareth. The 90-minute film will be shown on the Discovery Channel at a later date. The film makes the case that Jesus had a son named Judah with Mary Magdalene.

The news comes a year after the release of "The Da Vinci Code" movie, based on the best-selling novel of 2004 by Dan Brown, both of which also claimed Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus. The coffins reportedly carried the names of Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua. Some archaeologists who studied the find point out those were common names in Israel 2,000 years ago. Prominent Jerusalem archaeologist Amos Kloner is disputing the claims, saying, "It makes a great story for a TV film. But it's impossible. It's nonsense."

• JJ Commentary: More than ever, Satan is leading a full assault against everything Christian.

Unity?

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI called divisions among Christians a "scandal to the world" and recalled the faith's deep roots in Europe at a joint ceremony Thursday with the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians at his ancient enclave. Benedict has made outreach to the world's more than 250 million Orthodox a centerpiece of his young papacy and has set the difficult goal of full unity between the two ancient branches of Christianity, which split nearly 1,000 years ago over disputes including the extent of papal authority.

It's also a key part of the pope's drive to reinforce the Christian bonds in Europe and around the world. He said all Christians should "renew Europe's awareness of its Christian roots, traditions and values, giving them new vitality."

• JJ Commentary: Hard to believe that the Pope is calling for unity when Catholicism has long positioned itself in exclusive terms, as in the long-running, often deadly conflict with Protestantism in England and Ireland. But he’s right. Jesus called for unity in his last recorded prayer in John 17 where He warned that disunity would cause the world not to believe in Him