Day One — and ten years to go. So says Chuck Colson, Nixon dirty trickster turned evangelical leader, about the fight for a marriage amendment. A fight, some religious leaders say, that is just getting started — despite Wednesday’s Senate defeat. Alan Cooperman reports for The Washington Post.
Leaders of mainline Presbyterianism have “officially equated the Jewish state with apartheid and voted to stop investing in Israel” — making it the first major Christian denomination to do so. The Forward reports disapprovingly, but neglects the sharpened wedge this decision drives between the already antagonistic American evangelical and mainline Protestant communities. Major secular papers, meanwhile, ignored the 3-million strong denomination’s general assembly — except for The Washington Post, which buried it in the metro section.
You Need More Money — that’s the title of a book by one of Australia’s most powerful political figures right now. But his solution to the problem isn’t economic, it’s religious. Author Brian Houston is the pastor of the Australian Hillsong Church, the band of which has just released the continent’s #1 bestselling album, and the congregation of which is exerting a gravitational pull on all politicians within the orbit of evangelical Christianity. Which turns out to be quite a lot of them, even in a country that’s long ranked as one of the most atheistic in the world. Australian Broadcasting Company reports on a funhouse mirror image of the Christian right in America..