eChurch Christian Blog

Another House Committee Bid to Protect Unborn in Health Bill Fails Friday

By Kathleen Gilbert

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 31, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – What was possibly the final bid to halt the Obama administration health care bill’s expansion of abortion in the House Energy and Commerce Committee failed early Friday.

Another pro-life amendment offered by Democrat Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Joe Pitts (R-PA) to halt the abortion mandate Friday was rejected 27-31. (A tally of the votes can be found here.)

The amendment states that “no funds authorized under this Act (or amendment made by this Act) may be used to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion,” although it makes exceptions in the case of danger to the mother’s life, or in cases of rape or incest.

“Once again the Democratic Majority has demonstrated it fully intends to fund or subsidize abortion services in their health care plan,” commented Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on this latest Committee action.

“With the majority of Americans, we believe that health care legislation should not cover abortion. The actions of the House Committee demonstrate beyond any doubt that it intends for the federal government to fund coverage of abortion on demand.”

Perkins applauded Stupak and the other committee Democrats who voted to keep abortion out of the health care bill.

“We will continue to work with members of both parties to remove abortion from the government health care plan when this legislation moves to the House floor,” he said.

Stupak and Pitts had made a similar, initially successful bid during committee mark-ups late last night, but met with failure hours later when Committee Chairman Henry Waxman invoked House rules that allowed him to bring the measure up for a second vote.  The amendment then failed 30-29.

Earlier Thursday evening, the House passed an amendment by pro-abortion California Democrat Rep. Lois Capps that allows for federal funding of abortion coverage in the government health care plan, permits taxpayer subsidies of private plans covering abortion, and mandates that every U.S. region have at least one health plan covering abortion.

Man wanted to be like God and God has let it play out and this ‘experiement’ is not looking too promising thus far I’d say….

World Hunger Hits Historic High of 1 Billion

The number of people going hungry every day has hit a historic high of 1 billion, or more precisely 1.02 billion, according to the U.N. World Food Program.

Millions of people who were on the brink of hunger have now been thrown into this category by the global economic crisis that resulted in lower incomes and job losses.

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, about an additional 100 million people are in chronic hunger and poverty this year compared to last year.

And while the number of people with urgent food needs has increased, aid agencies are reporting lower donations and budget cuts.

WFP executive director Josette Sheeran said Wednesday the agency is facing “dangerous and unprecedented” funding shortfalls this year.

“Our budget for this year of assessed and approved needs is $6.7 billion and we expect from our projections and working with government to come in at $3.7 billion,” Sheeran said at a press briefing ahead of meetings at the White House.

Sheeran said the agency is working to cut $3 billion from its program by reducing rations and programs throughout the world.

Its goal is to feed 108 million people in 74 countries this year.

In addition to budget cuts, aid groups are also struggling with the impact of high food prices.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reports food prices are higher today than a year ago in more than 80 percent of developing countries.

Sheeran suggested that the food crisis is “not as dramatic at home” as in developed countries, resulting in less of a sense of urgency to help the world’s hungry.

But “one out of every six [people] today is on the official list of the urgently-hungry,” she said, according to RTTNews.com. “One-third of the world’s children in the developing world is stunted.”

The WFP official praised the United States – the world’s largest food aid donor – for being an advocate to finding solutions to long term needs as well as meeting immediate needs.

The United Sates provides about half of all food aid to needy people in the world.

Besides government agencies, Christian aid agencies such as Food for the Hungry, Food for the Poor, and Lutheran World Relief have also been a major contributor in helping to feed those vulnerable to hunger.

Since 1971, Food for the Hungry has responded to physical and spiritual hunger in more than 26 countries worldwide.

In response to the current food and economic crisis, the ministry calls on Christians to pray for the world’s poor and hungry and for long-term solutions to families at risk or on the brink of salvation, give financially to help the ministry respond to world hunger, and sponsor a child that will help to not only transform the child but also his/her family and community.

Classic

By Kathleen Gilbert

NEW YORK, July 31, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Center for Reproductive Rights has issued a report blaming pro-life activism and a growing “stigma” surrounding abortion for a steady decline in the procedure across the U.S., and is calling upon the U.S. government to help expand abortion by eradicating pro-life laws.

Nancy Northup, the center’s president, said physicians and clinics providing abortions have fallen by 25% since the 1990s – a decline it blamed on the pro-life presence outside the businesses of abortionists, whom the group upheld as “human rights defenders.” (To see the CRR document “Defending Human Rights,” click here.)

The report also targets legal restrictions on abortion, including the 24-hour waiting period and regulations for cleanliness in abortion clinics, and called upon federal, state, and local governments to abolish such laws as restricting the “constitutional right” to abortion.

“The Center for Reproductive Rights encourages the government at all levels to adopt and enforce measures to improve the safety of providers and to eliminate laws that impede their work,” stated the report.

In particular, the group called for the repeal of the Hyde amendment, which restricts Medicaid from funding abortions.  According to the Guttmacher Institute, such rules prohibiting public abortion funding save the lives of about one out of every three children who would have been aborted had public funds been available.

In response to the growing popularity of the pro-life movement – over half of participants in a recent Gallup poll considered themselves “pro-life” – the group called for active promotion of abortion as a mainstream health care procedure.

“Because abortion is not integrated into mainstream healthcare, it is marginalized and perceived as ‘dirty’ and outside of normal medical practice,” complained the group.

However, pro-life analysts believe the decline in physicians providing abortion can be traced to growing awareness of the repulsive nature of the procedure itself, rather than an imposed “stigma.”

“I think they [abortionists] have been diminishing in number for years because this is the type of trade that is contrary to the reason that people go to medical school,” Mary Spaulding Balch, state legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, told the Catholic News Agency.  After all, she noted, most medical students enter the profession with a desire to save life, not destroy it.

Because of advances in ultrasound technology and fetal surgery, Spaulding Balch said that younger doctors “are understanding the unborn child as the second patient.”

Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, noted how the report’s timing coincided with the push on Capitol Hill to fund and provide insurance for abortion in President Obama’s vast health care overhaul.

“I can’t help but think it’s nothing more than an attempt to scare the American people away from being informed and concerned about the massive abortion mandates that are in the proposed health care reform bills and that will remain there unless explicitly excluded,” Culp told the Kansas City Star.

The first time I read Michael Green’s Evangelism in the Early Church in 1984, it was a required textbook for a course at seminary. My subsequent six readings since then have all been the result of my desire to be reminded of the passionate heart of evangelism of the early Church. Green’s book, published in 1970, looks at the Church from the time of the Apostle Paul to Origen in the middle of the third century.

One of the greatest appeals of the book is the deep commitment to both theology and evangelism, and the recognition that the two cannot be divorced. Green says it well in the preface: “Most evangelists are not very interested in theology. Most theologians are not interested in evangelism. I am deeply committed to both.”

An Emerging and Encouraging Trend

Though my observations are anecdotal at this point, I am greatly encouraged to see more young church leaders today with a passion for both theology and evangelism. They realize that true evangelism will not take place without a solid biblical and theological foundation. And they realize that theology is dead unless it is lived out passionately in ministry and evangelism.

Nearly four decades ago, Michael Green wrote about that reality in the early Church. And he rightly insisted that theology and evangelism must not be separated in the Church today.

Evangelistic Motives in the Early Church

Green noted some of the evangelistic motives of the early Church. Not surprisingly, each motive has deep theological and biblical roots.

A sense of gratitude. The early Christians were tireless and unselfish in their evangelistic zeal. They were prepared to sacrifice all, even their own lives, in order to share the gospel of Christ. One of their primary motives was their overwhelming gratitude for what Christ did for them. So many of the biblical truths affirm this reality. For example, “Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10, HCSB). Similarly, we hear the Apostle Paul declare, “And I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

A sense of responsibility. The biblical mandate of evangelism is clear. We hear Great Commission passages such as Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts 1:8 repeated often. But the Bible is replete with passages that reflect this sense of responsibility. Paul, in his farewell address to the Ephesian elders, reported, “I testified to both Jews and Greeks about repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus” (Acts 20:21).

A sense of concern. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). The simple but powerful truth is that there are really two categories of humanity: the saved and the lost. The saved will spend eternity with Christ; the lost will spend eternity separated from Christ in hell. We must proclaim with passionate concern that Jesus in the only way of salvation (John 14:6). Our hearts should break over the lostness of humanity, and our response should be obedient and urgent evangelism.

A Great Commission Resurgence: When Theology Meets Evangelism

Will the evangelical church in America experience a Great Commission resurgence? With the early Church as our pattern, we can have great hope that such a resurgence will take place.

But no great evangelistic move of God has ever taken place without the rightful wedding of theology and evangelism. When evangelism has no theology, it degenerates into human-made methods and manipulation. When theology has no evangelism, it degenerates into a dry and powerless academic exercise.

May we see a Great Commission resurgence like the early Church.

May our motives be deeply theological.

May our actions be passionately evangelistic.

And may God do a great work in our land.

Ecumenical News International

UN runs into flak for rejecting Christian group as NGO observer

Geneva (ENI). A United Nations group that vets non-governmental organizations applying for accreditation to observe the international body, has rejected an international Christian group after it refused to divulge members’ names in China, citing fears about religious freedom.

UN Watch, a Geneva-based advocacy and monitoring group, condemned the U.N.’s decision to reject the Dynamic Christian World Mission Foundation application as an NGO observer due to its refusal to accede to China’s demands that it disclose member addresses in the People’s Republic.

Russia, Egypt, Cuba, Pakistan, and Sudan had expressed concerns about “the organization’s ability to contribute” to the United Nations.

At a meeting in Geneva on 27 July, the 54-member of the U.N. Economic and Social Council, known as ECOSOC that vets which NGOs get observer status, endorsed a decision taken by a subsidiary committee earlier in 2009 to reject the group’s application.

It also rejected a U.S. initiative to keep the application open for the Christian foundation, a group registered in South Korea and California and which promotes Christianity through educational projects in Russia, Japan and Kyrgyzstan. The vote was lost by 23 to 22 at ECOSOC.

“Today’s vote is a setback for religious freedom, and could set a dangerous precedent at the U.N. for repressive regimes to launch frivolous objections, or demand sensitive information, in order to obstruct the important work of civil society organizations in the areas of religion, education, and human rights,” said Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch.

The advocacy group has frequently accused bodies such as the U.N. Commission of Human Rights of being controlled by countries like China and Russia, and states such as Libya and Vietnam which have poor rights’ records.

Those voting to reject the Christian group included Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, India, Indonesia, China, Ivory Coast, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Pakistan, and Venezuela.

Those voting to support its application included the U.S., Brazil, Greece, Guatemala, Canada, El Salvador, Estonia, France, Germany, Japan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, and Portugal.

“NGOs at the U.N. are routinely under assault,” said Neuer in a statement.

At the same time, Neuer welcomed two other votes initiated by Western nations that saw ECOSOC grant accreditation to two NGOs, overruling earlier decisions by a lower committee.

By a vote of 25 to 12, with 13 abstentions, the U.N. accredited the Brazilian Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Association. Those voting against included Algeria, Belarus, China, Indonesia, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan.

Egypt, an observer state on the 54-member body, suggested that the aim of the NGO and its supporters was to make homosexuality universal, and complained of “double standards” against Muslim charities that were rejected for ties to terrorism. In response, Brazil said the group merely represented a constituency of people.

Similarly, by a vote of 30 to 9, with 8 abstentions, the United Nations on 29 July accredited the Democracy Coalition Project, a Washington-based organization founded by George Soros’ Open Society Institute. Those voting against it included China, Russia, Sudan, Venezuela, Belarus, Bolivia, Malaysia, and Mozambique. China and Russia said the group “attacked countries specifically” and had “a political agenda”.

In another statement on 29 July, U.N. Watch expressed disappointment at the refusal by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, to answer whether she will receive the Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, on his visit to Geneva in early August. The response is understood as a negative answer. Still, UN Watch welcomed her criticism of China’s “serious systemic violations of human rights” in Tibet, and her call for due process for detainees and access to international observers.