The State of Israel discriminates against non-Orthodox streams of Judaism and against Jewish-born believers in Christianity, while the Palestinian Authority has not been doing enough to combat Muslim violence against Christians, according to the US State Department’s annual International Religious Freedom Report on Israel released this week.

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Didn’t take long…

The Vatican’s offer to allow doctrinally Christian Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church en masse is eliciting increasingly shrill denunciations from representatives of the extreme left of the religious world. The Vatican, critics say, is indulging in a form of ecclesiastical “piracy” and is attempting to shift the Church back towards its old pre-Vatican II “imperialism.”

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It’s hard to tell in the quiet of a color-splashed autumn morning, but Redeemer Fellowship Church is trying to set roots in a rough neighborhood. For churches, anyway.

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Brian Tamaki’s self-proclaimed elevation to the rank of Bishop, or even King, is disturbing – not because of any judgment as to whether his form of religion is more “right” than anybody else’s, but because the doctrine and rulebook being espoused by the Destiny Church so totally discourage independent thought.

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Thanks to Alexa’s lack of counting – it is a conspiracy for sure, like – it will not be this month…but there are more than one way to skin a cat (the cat being Jim West)

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The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.(Jam 5:16-18 NKJ)

At Defending. Contending. they have taken this Reformation Day to point out the evils of Rome. Here are some which are just delightful:

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Ministers are not perfect, nor free from the pit falls of society. You might want to take the time to read this piece in the USA Today,

What kind of personal pain would cause a 42-year-old pastor to abandon his family, his calling and even life itself? Members of a Baptist church here are asking that question after their pastor committed suicide in his parked car in September.

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Another Reformer, often unknown, was Heinrich Bullinger. Below are a few quotes – feel free to add your own.

“This depravation of our nature is nothing else but the blotting out of God’s image in us.”

“There was in our father Adam before his fall the very image and likeness of God.”

The ineffable mercy and divine grace of the eternal God are proven, first, in that God offers this covenant not in any way because of the merits of humans but rather out of the sheer goodness which is God’s nature. I do not know whether humans are capable of conceiving this mystery fully or conveying how praiseworthy it is (BE 104-105).

…you only serve Jell-O in the proper liturgical color for the season.

…you didn’t know chow mein noodles were a Chinese food.

…when someone mentions red and green (in terms of Christmas), you immediately think of a battle over hymnals.

…during the entire service you hold your hymnal open but never look down at it.
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