ECUSA meeting fails to mend fracture

Following a critical meeting in Tanzania in February, the Anglican Communion failed to reach a solution to the impasse over homosexuality created by the Episcopal Church (ECUSA), its U.S. branch.

Leaders of the Anglican Communion provinces, who are known as “primates” and are, for the most part, orthodox in their beliefs, issued a statement following their meeting. The statement said the U.S. church had disregarded the teaching of the Anglican Communion on human sexuality and asked ECUSA’s House of Bishops to reverse the denomination’s course regarding the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of bishops in same-sex relationships.

ECUSA, which only has 2.2 million members, created a breach in the 77-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion when the U.S. church ordained openly-homosexual Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. Conservatives both inside and outside the U.S. reacted strongly to the consecration, causing a potential schism over the issue of homosexuality.

That fissure widened last summer when ECUSA chose Katherine Jefferts Schori to serve the denomination as presiding bishop. The vast majority of Anglican provinces do not ordain women clergy at any level. Moreover, Schori has further alienated conservatives by publicly voicing her support for the normalization of homosexuality and the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy. She has also stated that she does not necessarily believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven.

Ralph Webb, director of Anglican Action with the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C., said ECUSA’s actions are far-reaching. “There’s a lot at stake here, because what the Episcopal Church has done … has really hurt the Anglican Communion,” Webb said. “It has wounded not just itself, but the Anglican Communion [as well], and if it does not reverse its course, then it could just create further devastating wounds to the larger body of Christ.”

Many conservatives believe that the denomination’s increasingly leftward tilt theologically has caused its hemorrhage of members over the last four decades.

According to ECUSA statistics, between 1965 and 2005 the denomination’s number of active baptized members declined from 3.6 million to 2.2 million – a drop of 39%.

In fact, mainline Protestant denominations as a whole continue their steady decline in membership, while some more conservative denominations have been growing. (See chart.) Like ECUSA, the other major mainline Protestant churches appear to be facing crises over the issue of homosexuality.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), for example, may be on the verge this summer of its own conflict over homosexuality.

In February an ELCA discipline hearing committee ruled that an Atlanta pastor, who is an avowed practicing homosexual, be removed from the church’s clergy roster in August. While conservatives within the denomination cheered that ruling, the committee also called for ELCA leaders to change its policies regarding homosexuality.

According to a denominational press release, the committee specifically recommended that the ELCA Churchwide Assembly revise ecclesiastical guidelines that preclude practicing homosexuals from serving as clergy.

It also called upon the church to accept gay and lesbian sexual relationships as legitimate – as long as they are within “a loving, lifelong partnership with another person of the same sex that is mutual, chaste and faithful.”

Will ELCA come down on the wrong side of the ideological and Biblical divide? At least one group hopes so. The committee’s actions and recommendations were lauded by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest homosexual civil rights group in the nation.

AFA/ACTIVISM
Principal disallows prayer in Veterans Day program
Clyde Easter, a veteran of World War II, went to the Veterans Day program at Carroll County (Virginia) Intermediate School expecting prayer to be on the agenda, as it had traditionally been. But there had been a last-minute change of plans.

Easter wrote AFA President Tim Wildmon, “We always had an opening prayer for our program in the past. I was filling in for our chaplain this year, but was told by the principal … that I could not have an opening prayer, that it was not allowed anymore in our schools.”

Consequently, Easter and about 10 other veterans (of a group of some 25 vets) chose not to participate in the program and left the assembly. Easter told the AFA Journal that the principal at another Carroll County school gave them the same decision – no more prayers.

As a result of the incident, Easter has begun a campaign to put prayer back in public schools. He has prepared a petition and distributed it via a veterans’ newsletter he edits. By March 1, he had collected more than 6,000 signatures.

This is not the first foray into citizen activism for the 82-year-old veteran. Thirty years ago, while living in Nashville, Tennessee, he participated in a local AFA affiliate that addressed the issues of pornography in the family marketplace and offensive television programs.

For more information or to secure a copy of his “Prayer In Schools” petition, Easter may be reached at 299 Panorama Drive, Fancy Gap, VA 24328, or telephone 276-728-7293.

Summit schedules summer conferences
Summit is an educational Christian ministry that exists as a response to the current post-Christian culture. The ministry functions as a catalyst to counteract the current trend by training and equipping Christians to have a positive influence on the culture in which they live.

One way Summit does this is through summer conferences for both students (two weeks) and adults (one week). At the student conferences, nationally-renowned faculty help young people develop a Biblical worldview by understanding ideas and answering major challenges to Christianity.

The adult conferences are taught by some of the sharpest Christian thinkers in America who equip adults to engage in the battle for hearts and minds by explaining to them how God’s Word speaks to current ideas and issues.

For more information or to attend a conference this summer, visit www.summit.org, download and complete an application and mail it to: Summit, P.O. Box 207, Manitou Springs, CO 80829, or fax it to 719-685-9330. To request an application over the phone, call 719-685-9103.

For a 2007 conference schedule for students and adults, click here.

CULTURE
Jersey judge orders sex offender to read Christian book
Judge Anthony Beltrami threw the book at Bret Lepore when he ordered Lepore to read Every Man’s Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. The New Jersey judge sentenced Lepore for statutory sexual assault after he had sex with two 14-year-olds he met on a Web site popular among teenagers.

Beltrami also ordered Lepore to serve one to two years in jail plus five years’ probation, maintain full-time employment and perform 70 hours of community service.

Every Man’s Battle was written by Stephen Arterburn, Mike Yorkey and Fred Stoeker. Upon hearing that his book was a part of Beltrami’s sentence, Arterburn remarked, “I’m always happy to learn that people are reading my books, but I can hear the jokes already that this book is so bad that judges are sentencing people to read it as part of their punishment.”

Arterburn is founder of New Life Ministries (NLM), the nation’s largest faith-based counseling ministry. His hope is that Lepore will be challenged to seek spiritual help and healing to put his life back together. The Every Man’s Battle series and spinoff resources for women and youth have sold more than one million copies.

Every Man’s Battle is also included in Every Soldier’s Battle, a kit of four books and a Bible sent to military chaplains. NLM has distributed more than 24,000 kits and has 20,000 requests on hold.

“We ship them as we receive funds,” said Larry Sonnenburg, COO of New Life (www.newlife.com). We urge others to join us  with their support in serving our military men and women in this project.”

www.nj.com/news/expresstimes, 2/11/07

PORNOGRAPHY
Multinational police station targets pedophiles
Authorities all over the world are stepping up and cracking down on Internet child pornography.

In January, U.S. officials joined forces with Canada, Great Britain and Australia to form a global police unit that will patrol cyberspace for child molesters who prey online.

The program, known as the Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT), is part of a series of initiatives designed to counteract the rising activity of online pedophiles and child pornographers.

VGT agents from participating countries will take turns monitoring the program’s London-based Web site (www.virtualglobaltaskforce.com) where people can report suspected predators. A link to the Web site will also be made available through an icon in several popular chat rooms, so potential victims can make immediate reports.

These reports help investigators track a suspect’s location through his Internet connection. Once a location is established, local authorities are contacted to investigate the claims or make an arrest.

Arrests have been made through the VGT including that of 21-year-old Lee Costi, who was sentenced to nine years of imprisonment in England. According to USA Today, Costi pleaded guilty to “sexual activity with a child, making indecent images of children, possessing more than 40 such images and several other charges.”

VGT chairman Jim Gamble said, “VGT is the multinational, online police station,” an effective counterforce to a multibillion dollar industry.

www.usatoday.com, 11/15/06; www.onenewsnow.com, 2/8/07

More kids exposed to online pornography
Online exposure to porn continues to rise among children, according to a study from the University of New Hampshire.

The exposure is mostly accidental and happens while children are surfing the Internet. In 2005, 1,500 Internet users, ages 10 to 17, were surveyed over the telephone with parental consent.

Forty-two percent of the respondents said they had seen porn online in a recent 12-month period. Researchers said 66% of those did not seek it out and did not want to see it.

Most of these children were ages 13 to 17, although 10- and 11-year-olds – 17% of boys and 16% of girls – were also exposed against their wishes.

However, more than one-third of boys, ages 16 and 17, admitted they purposefully visited X-rated sites during the past year, whereas 8% of the same-aged girls visited such sites.

Overall, in 2005 34% experienced unwanted exposure to online porn, nine points up from 25% found in a similar survey taken during 1999 and 2000.

“It’s so common now, who hasn’t seen something like that?” said Emily Duhovney, 17, a high school senior and editor for Sexetc.org.

While filtering and blocking software helps, researchers agree that better methods are needed to allow access to legitimate sites while restricting “the use of aggressive and deceptive tactics to market pornography online.”

Although many participants in the 2005 study said they were not disturbed by what they saw, researchers and psychiatrists agree that exposure to online pornography could:

www.foxnews.com, 2/5/07

Authorities bust child porn ring
Austrian investigators have uncovered a major international child pornography ring involving thousands of suspects from dozens of countries, including Germany, Algeria, Russia, and the United States.

Law enforcement officials in Austria said the child porn ring was made up of suspects from 77 countries, including hundreds in the U.S., who paid about $90 each to view videos that depicted infants and young children being sexually abused.

Austrian Interior Minister Guenther Platter described the videos as a representation of the “worst kind of child sex abuse.”

The videos were made in Eastern Europe and accessed on a Russian Web site that received more than 8,000 hits from 2,361 global addresses during a 24-hour period.

According to an Associated Press report, federal police are touting the case as “a strike against child pornography unprecedented in Austrian criminal history.”

Pat Trueman, special counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) and former head of the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, said the authorities “don’t catch these rings that often, but it’s not unusual to have such a large operation under way.

“Children from Eastern European countries or the Orient are often [those who are being] molested,” Trueman added, “and it takes a long time for law enforcement to catch up with the source.”

Although no suspects are yet in custody, Austrian authorities investigating the multinational kiddie porn ring said they are sharing their information with law enforcement in other countries.

www.usatoday.com, 2/7/07; www.onenewsnow.com, 2/8/07

The report references a new study conducted by Dr. Michael New of the University of Alabama. By examining data from 1985 to 1999, New found that the abortion rate among minors declined 16% in states with parental-involvement laws in place. In addition, states with Medicaid-funding restrictions led to a 23% decline.

“While a number of factors may have contributed to this decline,” New wrote, “the impact of pro-life legislation on the incidence of abortion among minors cannot be overlooked.”

In fact, he said the findings send a message that pro-life advocates are making significant strides.

“A lot of people don’t think the pro-life movement has been that successful because 34 years later we still have not overturned Roe v. Wade,” New said. “But since 1973, we have made a lot of incremental gains – especially at the state level.”

On top of that, Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, noted that the study refutes previous claims that pro-life laws are ineffective.

“Dr. New’s research – based on fact – helps to shatter the myths being put forward by the abortion lobby and the media,” Wright said. “It verifies what common sense would tell us – pro-life regulations have a positive effect.”

Therefore, it is important to continue electing candidates who will fight for pro-life legislation, which provides pre-borns with more protection, New added.

www.citizenlink.org, 2/7/07