21 July 2010
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Presbyterians Week Headlines
[1] Pakistani Muslims Murder Christian Pastor and Brother Falsely Accused of Blasphemy
[5] Washington DC Court of Appeals Refuses to Let Residents Vote For or Against Homosexual Marriage
[7] The Social Contract Quarterly Issues 100 Page Special Report on the Southern Poverty Law Center
[8] Church of Scotland Approves Plan to Double Stack Bodies in Grave Sites
[9] La Crosse, Wisconsin, PCUSA Church Employee Arrested for Embezzlement of Church Funds
[10] PCUSA Publishes New Form of Government Questions and Answers
[11] Ligonier Ministries Publishes “Holy, Holy, Holy: Proclaiming the Perfections of God”
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[1] Pakistani Muslims Murder Christian Pastor and Brother Falsely Accused of Blasphemy
A 19 July 2010 Compass Direct News Service article titled “Christians Accused of ‘Blasphemy’ Slain in Pakistan” reports that Christians the Rev. Rashid Emmanuel and his brother Sajid Emmanuel, both officials of United Ministries Pakistan, were murdered by masked gunmen 19 July 2010 while in police custody in Faisalabad, Pakistan.
The brothers had been falsely charged with blaspheming Muhammad in writing, but a handwriting expert found that the signatures on the forged blaspheming papers were not those of the Emmanuel brothers.
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+ Compass Direct News Service, Post Office Box 27250, Santa Ana, California 92799, 949-862-0304, Fax: 949-752-6536, info@compassdirect.org
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[2] FaceBook Takes Down Four Muslim-Oriented Spamming Pages, 2.5 Million Muslims Threaten to Leave for Alternative Islamic Site
A 16 July 2010 article by Niall Firth in The Daily Mail titled “More than 2.5m Muslims Threaten to Leave Facebook after Four Islamic Pages are Taken Down” reports that after FaceBook removed four Muslim-oriented FaceBook pages in violation of user agreements for using a JavaScript application, which uses an address entered into the address bar to add all of a user’s “Friends” to the Page Suggestions, a template letter began being posted to many FaceBook pages, threatening to move more than 2.5 million Muslim FaceBook users to an alternate Islamic site.
The template letter additionally demands that FaceBook make it a violation of its user agreement to post anti-Islamic comments.
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+ The Daily Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT, England, 020-7938-6000, news@dailymail.co.uk
+ Facebook, Inc., 471 Emerson Street, Palo Alto, California 94301, 650-543-4800, Fax: 650-543-4801, Contact Page
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At 8:30 a.m., Saturday, 17 July 2010, Pastor Ronnie Wallace, a pastor and disabled veteran from Charlotte, North Carolina, was arrested by seven police officers on the public right of way in front of the Family Reproductive Health abortion clinic on Hebron Street in Charlotte, North Carolina, for obstruction. Pastor Wallace comes regularly to the same location to preach the gospel and offer hope to women who are entering the clinic. Pastor Wallace, a disabled war veteran, walks with a cane and cannot stand for long periods of time.
When Pastor Wallace arrived, sat on a step ladder, and began to preach with sound amplification, the police told him to stop. He turned off the sound amplifier and began to preach using his voice alone. At this point, the police demanded that he stop and come down from the step ladder. When he refused, citing his First Amendment right to assemble and preach, he was arrested under a statute that states it is unlawful to place or maintain an obstruction in the right of way, “in consideration of the harm or risk created by the obstruction.” Pastor Wallace placed his step ladder approximately 12 feet from the road, well away from traffic.
Director of Operation Save America the Rev. Philip L. (Flip) Benham commented: “A black Pastor does obstruct Satan and those who serve him by proclaiming Jesus. Pastor Wallace threatened Satan and his minions by proclaiming another king, King Jesus.”
Pastor Wallace returned to the public right-of-way on 20 July 2010, and again began preaching from atop his step ladder. When the police ordered Wallace to stop preaching, he stepped over from the ladder to an adjacent tree, where he remained unarrested as of a 12:17 p.m. Operation Save America press release.
The press release concluded:
“What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” — Matt. 10:27-28
“When a pastor cannot find a housetop to proclaim that Jesus is Lord, then a tree will do!” — The Rev. Rusty Thomas
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+ Christian News Wire, 2020 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington DC 20006, 202-546-0054, newsdesk@christiannewswire.com
+ Operation Save America, Post Office Box 740066, Dallas, Texas 75374, 704-933-3414, 704-932-3361, orn@bigplanet.com
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A 25 May 2010 LifeSiteNews.com article by Kathleen Gilbert “School Official Suspended for Distributing 4″ Fetus Models” reports that an unidentified staffer at the Oakwood Elementary School in Norfolk, Virginia, were suspended after giving the school’s third to fifth grade students each a doll that is a model of an unborn baby twelve weeks after conception, along with a card that describes the unborn baby’s development for each of the twelve weeks.
Pro-life blogger Jill Stanek questioned the reasoning behind the uproar over the tiny baby dolls, calling a local television station’s description of the dolls as “fetus figures” with a “clear anti-abortion message attached,” a “hit job against rationality.” Stanek additionally commented: “Shock! Horror! Since when did human biology become a ‘clear anti-abortion message’?”
Oakwood Principal Sheila Holas was put on administrative leave 21 May 2010, after the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia demanded that the principal cease inviting students and teachers to participate in prayer and Bible study.
In related news, Liberty Counsel has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico on behalf of eight students at two Roswell, New Mexico high schools who on 29 January 2010 handed out the same type of dolls along with fliers for a local crisis pregnancy center. The materials were confiscated by school officials and the students disciplined for handing out the materials. The students, part of a Christian youth group, had previously handed out various materials, evangelistic and otherwise, to the teachers and students, but had never before been disciplined for doing so.
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+ LifeSiteNews.com, Incorporated, Post Office Box 25382, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15220, 866-787-9947, lsn@lifesitenews.com
+ Life Issues Institute, 1821 West Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, Ohio 45239, 513-729-3600, info@lifeissues.org
+ Liberty Counsel, Post Office Box 540774, Orlando, Florida 32854, 800-671-1776, Liberty@LC.org
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[5] Washington DC Court of Appeals Refuses to Let Residents Vote For or Against Homosexual Marriage
The Washington DC Court of Appeals on 15 July 2010, in a five-to-four decision, ruled that the citizens of Washington DC do not have the right to vote on whether or not homosexual marriage will be legalized in the U.S. capital city.
Concerned Women for America Chief Executive Officer Penny Nance denounced the opinion, saying: “Knowing that whenever the issue of homosexual marriage is left to the voters the people overwhelmingly choose to protect traditional marriage and recognize only marriages between one man and one woman, a handful of activist judges who want to promote what they see as a desirable policy for our country, have taken matters into their own hands and imposed homosexual marriage by judicial fiat.”
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+ Christian News Wire, 2020 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington DC 20006, 202-546-0054, newsdesk@christiannewswire.com
+ Concerned Women for America, 1015 Fifteenth Street Northwest, Suite 1100, Washington DC 20005, 202-488-7000, Fax: 202-488-0806
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A 20 July 2010 OneNewsNow article by Charlie Butts titled “Possible Ultimatum for NC Attorneys” reports that the North Carolina Bar Association is considering the addition of non-discrimination rules for “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” for lawyers licensed to practice in North Carolina.
Alliance Defense Fund senior counsel Joe Infranco commented: “Attorneys might be penalized just for abiding by their beliefs if this revision is approved…It potentially threatens religious free exercise of attorneys who might be advocating against those types of behavior in a particular case,” and offered the example of an attorney representing a church that dismissed a homosexual employee on biblical grounds that could face possible punishment for defending the church.
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+ American Family Association, Post Office Drawer 2440, Tupelo, Mississippi 38803, 662-844-5036
+ Alliance Defense Fund, 15100 North 90th Street, Scottsdale, Arizona 85260, 800-835-5233, Fax: 480-444-0025
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[7] The Social Contract Quarterly Issues 100 Page Special Report on the Southern Poverty Law Center
The Spring 2010 edition of The Social Contract Quarterly (SCQ) is a 100-plus page special report on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which the publication describes as “an organization that has long been trying to curtail open debate on critical public issues.”
— Engages in dubious fund-raising. A recent audit disclosed that SPLC spent eighty-nine percent of its total income on fund-raising and administrative costs. Unknown to most donors, the tax-exempt SPLC flunked an audit by the Better Business Bureau‘s Wise Giving Alliance.
— The Alabama-based organization recklessly attacks principled opponents of their agenda as “racists.” Targets have included: The American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, Eagle Forum, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, and even the blockbuster film, “Lord of the Rings.”
— The SPLC is ideologically aligned with cultural Marxists and far-left militants, such as Weather Underground terror-bomber Bill Ayers, who is described by the SPLC‘s “Teaching Tolerance” project as merely a “civil rights organizer … teacher and author.”
Articles in the Spring 2010 edition of the SCQ include:
— A Note from the Editor – The SPLC: Poisoning Public Discourse
— Cooking the Books on ‘Hate’- A Closer Look at SPLC’s Famous List
— SPLC: America’s Left-Wing Hate Machine
— The Practice of Ritual Defamation – How Values, Opinions, and Beliefs Are Controlled in Democratic Societies
— What’s Behind the Anti-Tea Party Hate Narrative?
— Power, Politics, and the New Proletariat – Race Extortion in the Age of Cultural Marxism
— Hyping ‘Hate’ – Understanding the Incestuous Relationship between the Mass Media and the SPLC
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+ Christian News Wire, 2020 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington DC 20006, 202-546-0054, newsdesk@christiannewswire.com
+ The Social Contract Press, 445 East Mitchell Street, Petoskey, Michigan 49770, 231-347-1171, Fax: 231-347-1185, Contact Page
+ Southern Poverty Law Center, 400 Washington Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama 36104, 334-956-8200, Contact Page
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[8] Church of Scotland Approves Plan to Double Stack Bodies in Grave Sites
A 15 July 2010 article in The Scotsman titled “Leader: Double Parking the Dead” reports that in response to a shortage of burial plots in Scotland, the Church of Scotland approves of government plans to dig up remains more than seventy-five years old from cemetery plots, deepen the plots, rebury the disinterred remains, then bury another body on top of the former sole occupant of the grave site.
The Scotsman questions how long until the seventy-five year old remains requirement is lowered, and comments: “It turns once peaceful and reflective cemeteries into little more than municipal car parks for old bones.”
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+ The Scotsman, Barclay House, 108 Holyrood Road, Edinburgh EH8 8AS, Scotland, 131-620-8620
+ Church of Scotland, 121 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 4YN, Scotland, 0131-225-5722
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[9] La Crosse, Wisconsin, PCUSA Church Employee Arrested for Embezzlement of Church Funds
A 17 July 2010 article in the La Crosse Tribune titled “Church Employee Accused of Embezzlement” reports that Ann Carson, former employee of the North Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church (PCUSA)) was arrested 15 July 2010 and is expected to be charged with embezzlement of US$1000’s from the church over ten years by writing checks to herself and logging the checks into accounting ledgers as being paid to someone else. An audit revealed several checks for large amounts that had been altered and cashed.
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+ La Crosse Tribune, 401 North Third Street, La Crosse, Wisconsin 54601, 608-782-9710, 608-782-9723, rusty.cunningham@lee.net
+ Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202, 888-728-7228, Fax: 502-569-8005
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[10] PCUSA Publishes New Form of Government Questions and Answers
The Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) Office of the General Assembly has published a list of questions and answers about the new form of government approved by the July 2010 219th General Assembly, which is being submitted to the PCUSA presbyteries for consideration:
http://www.pcusa.org/news/2010/7/15/new-form-government-questions-and-answers/
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+ Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202, 888-728-7228, Fax: 502-569-8005
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[11] Ligonier Ministries Publishes “Holy, Holy, Holy: Proclaiming the Perfections of God”
Ligonier Ministries has adapted lectures from the Ligonier Ministries‘ 2009 National Conference into the book Holy, Holy, Holy: Proclaiming the Perfections of God, contributed to by Thabiti Anyabwile, Alistair Begg, D.A. Carson, Sinclair B. Ferguson, W. Robert Godfrey, Steven J. Lawson, R.C. Sproul, R.C. Sproul Jr., and Derek W.H. Thomas.
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+ Ligonier Ministries, 400 Technology Park, Lake Mary, Florida 32746, 407-333-4244, Fax: 407-333-4233
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