Video: AR Pastor Ronnie Floyd Opens U.S. House with Prayer

Religion, , ,

Pastor Ronnie Floyd of Cross Church in Fayetteville opened the U.S. House of Representatives with prayer this morning.

Pastor Floyd was recently elected President of the Southern Baptist Convention. The act of opening public meetings with prayer is a longstanding American tradition that, as the U.S. Supreme Court has noted, predates the U.S. Constitution. We are pleased to see Pastor Floyd participating in that tradition, asking for divine wisdom for our elected officials.

Watch his prayer below.

READ MORE

Minor Holiday, Major Message?

1 CommentReligion, Religious Freedom, ,

The following blog post is by Family Council staff member Deborah Beuerman.

The Jewish celebration of Hanukkah this year received much more attention in the news than usual because Hanukkah and Thanksgiving overlapped for the first time in over 100 years.

Like most non-Jews, I knew little about this festival.  I knew it is called The Festival of Lights, that one more candle on a candle stand called a menorah is lighted each day for about a week, that the celebration somehow commemorates a battle, that potato pancakes and dreidels are involved, that it is a minor holiday, and that in this country many Jewish children are given gifts because their parents don’t want them to be envious of Christian children who receive Christmas gifts around the same time.

I was enlightened by a caller to a talk show who explained the meaning of Hanukkah and offered some very thought-provoking insight into the situation in our country today.

(more…)

READ MORE

CA Costco Labels Bible “Fiction”

Religion, ,

Costco is in hot water this week after it says “human error” left “Fiction” labels on every copy of the Bible for sale in at least one California store.

Todd Starnes writes he was contacted by a pastor who was outraged on seeing copies of the Bible labeled “Fiction.” Starnes writes,

“He thought there must be some sort of mistake so he scoured the shelf for other Bibles. Every copy was plastered with a sticker that read, ‘$14.99 Fiction.'”

Starnes contacted Costco for an explanation, and was promptly told the labels were the result of “human error.”

The problem is, as Starnes also points out, Costco hasn’t fixed the error. There’s still a pile of Bibles for sale at Costco under the “Fiction” category. Human error or not, that’s a big deal. As KERO-Bakersfield notes, “[T]he Bibles already labeled as fiction on store shelves have not been relabeled. The company did not apologize.”

Labeling the Bible as “Fiction” marginalizes our Christian faith, and refusing to correct that mistake once it’s noticed marginalizes it further. At the very least, it’s insulting; at worst, it shows that maybe Costco doesn’t really think slapping a “Fiction” label on the Bible was such a mistake after all.

Either way, it’s disconcerting.

READ MORE