House Passes Faith-Based Jobs Bill

One day after President Bush delivered a speech pushing for congressional action on faith-based initiatives, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a job-training bill that would allow faith-based organizations receiving federal funds to consider a job candidate’s religious beliefs during the hiring process.

In a statement supporting the bill, the White House said: “Receipt of federal funds should not be conditioned on a faith-based organization’s giving up a part of its religious identity and mission.”

The legislation provides funds for training and vocational rehabilitation programs for adults, as well as activities for low-income youth. The bill now goes to the Senate, where its passage is less certain.

The House’s passage of the legislation came on Mar. 3, just one day after the president told a gathering of 250 religious leaders that he will continue to push legislation to allow religious groups to compete for federal money.

“It is said that faith can move mountains,” Bush said. “Here in Washington, D.C., those helping the poor and needy often run against a big mountain called bureaucracy. I’m here to talk about how to move that mountain so that we can reach out and partner with programs which reach out to people who hurt.”

Bush told the group that, during his presidency, 10 federal agencies have created offices to deal with religious charities. He said the government distributed about $2 billion in grants during the last budget year to help religious programs for the needy.

(EP News)

Philadelphia Judge Dismisses Case Against Christians Protesting ‘Gay Pride’ Festival

A Philadelphia judge has dismissed charges against four Christians accused of inciting a riot and violating hate crime laws while protesting at a gay pride festival on a public street last year. Judge Pamela Dembe ruled that the four members of Repent America were exercising their right to free speech, but added this: “Many of these messages may be repulsive and offensive but people are allowed to make them.” Drawing comparisons, Dembe also told the packed courtroom that free speech extends to neo-Nazis marching in towns where Holocaust survivors live, and to the Ku Klux Klan.

(EP News)

Presbyterian School Changes Christianity Requirement for Trustees

When Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., announced in February that it would no longer require all trustees at the historically Christian school to hold a Christian profession of faith, trustee Tim Ross explained the decision this way: “There are times in the history of an institution when you make a decision because it’s the right thing to do. We felt this was the right thing for Davidson.”

The new bylaws state that at least 80 percent of the 45 voting trustees for the Presbyterian school must be Christian.

Davidson is a prestigious 1700-student, private, liberal arts college located near Charlotte. Since its establishment in 1837, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked among the top liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News and World Report.

Davidson College was founded in 1837 as a Reformed and Presbyterian school. The college’s first catalog described the institution’s mission as providing a place where “the youthful mind might be trained under the restraints of Christianity and in which the Bible should be recognized as the infallible rule of life.”

Conservative Christian graduates of Davidson are balking at both the change in trustee requirements and the school’s claim that the change reflects the college’s religious heritage.

Rev. A. Boyd Miller IV, a Davidson graduate and an Orthodox Presbyterian minister in LaGrange, Ga., said, “Many at Davidson are ashamed of the gospel and the notion that the Bible is God’s inspired Word, which should govern our lives, much less a college,” Miller said. “They want nothing to do with founding President Robert H. Morrison’s inaugural statement: ‘The Bible must be supreme in seats of learning if their moral atmosphere is to be kept pure.’”

In practice, Davidson College today bears little-to-no resemblance to most evangelical Christian colleges in the U.S. The school no longer requires students to attend chapel; it no longer requires faculty to be Christian; and it openly embraces religious universalism.

The school’s Religious Life web page states: “Religious life at Davidson College is celebrated on the affirmation that we are all children of God, whatever our creed, heritage or beliefs.”

Dr. George Knight, a 1953 Davidson graduate and teaching elder at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, said, “The Christian view of tolerance was at one time to respect the religious liberty of our fellow citizens, even if we think they are quite wrong, and to defend that liberty for them in the civil sphere. Now tolerance has acquired the meaning of recognizing the non-Christian view as being as valid as that of Christianity, even though our Lord Jesus Himself said: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

(Jamie Dean/EP News)

Indian Pastor Is Murdered

On Feb. 11, the body of 25-year-old Christian evangelist Pastor Narayan was found in the small town of Channapatana, India. Doctors who performed an autopsy said Narayan had been brutally murdered. The corpse had broken ribs and teeth and injuries to the abdomen. However, “the official report of the autopsy suggested it was a case of suicide,” Sajan K. George of the Global Council of Indian Christians told Compass.

A fact-finding mission to the district revealed that attacks on minority Christians have been going on for years and several churches have been destroyed. George has demanded that the government conduct an official inquiry through the Central Bureau of Investigation.

(Compass)