Former dcTalk member Michael Tait will replace Peter Furler when the Newsboys perform in concert, it was announced this week at Jesusfreakhideout.com:
Peter will continue with the band and his trademark songwriting and production will remain as he focuses his professional career toward future newsboys recordings. Michael has been on the road with the band over the past weeks working alongside Peter in what has been a positive and enjoyable experience for both parties. It has been a graceful process that both Peter and Michael have worked through as they prepare to make the change in the coming weeks.
Peter states “newsboys to me has always been a mission, and I entrust Mike, Jeff, Jody and Duncan to continue all that is in store for us as a band. I’m looking forward to focusing on the band’s studio career and spending time in my own bed after many years in a tour bus and hundreds of thousands of miles on the road.”
Wes Campbell, newsboys manager explains, “While the decision to replace Peter on the road was a painstaking one, when the idea of dc Talk vocalist Michael Tait was presented it was a no-brainer to all of us. No one can replace Peter, but we know Michael will bring a new attitude, energy and vocal style that will thrill our audience. To be able to continue a world class show and still have Peter behind the scenes guiding the career and making of newsboys music is a huge opportunity for all of us. It’s amazing that after many years of touring with dc Talk in the 1990s that in 2009 our paths would cross once again. It’s an exciting time for all of us.”
So, yesterday I posted about a story from two Associated Press reporters, Ben Feller and Lauran Neergaard, who couldn’t find anyone to quote about their objections to President Obama reversing Bush policy to restrict funding for embryonic stem cell research. What did they do? Find a scientist to better frame the debate? Nah.
Instead, they updated their story with a quote from Tony Perkins at the Family Research Council. Oh, wait, that’s the conservative Family Research Council:
“Taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for experiments that require the destruction of human life,” said Tony Perkins of the conservative Family Research Council. “President Obama’s policy change is especially troubling given the significant adult stem cell advances that are being used to treat patients now without harming or destroying human embryos.”
After a cursory summary of the potential of adult stem cell research over the last eight years the article veers back to the left and states that scientists, not politics should judge. OK, who just inserted politics into this story? Anyone? Yes, that would be reporters Ben Feller and Lauran Neergaard (and, most likely, the anonymous editors) of the not-conservative Associated Press.
Now, to be fair, that quotation from Perkins might have been in the original story but was cut by an editor. But I’m going to say this anyway. Listen closely , AP: There are plenty of scientists (not politians or activists) who I’m sure would like to talk about their research with adult stem cells and give you balanced feedback about this. If you want to do your politics story and talk to people like Tony Perkins — who does have a point — then do it in another story with activists who are pro-embryonic stem cell research. And, if you really did talk and quote adult stem cell research scientists and then cut it, then shame on you.
But to frame this as a science-vs.-politics story is completely manipulative on your part. Again, your story (even updated) is still cheerleading.
The Associated Press reported Friday that President Obama is expected to sign on Monday an executive order reversing restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
After reading this article, you may wonder what’s missing. The answer: Any kind of reaction from those opposing reversing restrictions. Instead, we are given the views of an anonymous senior administration official (the quote fragment “scientific integrity” which gives you an idea of how this administration totally misunderstands the issue), a stem cell researcher who favors embryonic stem cell research, Obama himself (from his views on the campaign trail when he announced his opposition) and a spokesman for a group that advocates embryonic stem cell research.
What can be said that might give pause for reversing the policy? Two paragraphs give the entire argument against it:
Such research is controversial because embryos must be destroyed to obtain the cells; they typically are culled from fertility-clinic leftovers otherwise destined to be thrown away. Once a group of stem cells is culled, it can be kept alive and propagating in lab dishes for years.
There are different types of stem cells, and critics say the nation should pursue alternatives to embryonic ones such as adult stem cells, or those found floating in amniotic fluid or the placenta. But leading researchers consider embryonic stem cells the most flexible, and thus most promising, form – and say that science, not politics, should ultimately judge.
This is followed by a comment by an embryonic stem cell research advocate saying that “science works best and patients are served best by having all the tools at our disposal.”
It’s disappointing that it took two writers, Ben Feller and Lauran Neergaard, to write an article that is basically propaganda for the embryonic stem cell research position. It’s not like there are no scientists to be found on the other side, but Feller and Neergaard didn’t make the effort to talk to them. Here would have been a good start, at least as far as better framing the argument from the other side. Instead, we get cheerleading from the AP.
The Treasury Department announced today that the bail out [sic] of AIG Insurance, which began in September under the Bush administration, is working better than expected.
Encouraged by the company’s loss of nearly $62 billion in the 4th quarter of 2008, the Obama administration injected another $30 billion into AIG this week.
“The government stepped in last year with $150 billion because AIG was too big to fail,” said Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. “The stock was trading in early September at more than $20 per share.
Today it’s worth less than 50 cents a share. If we keep pumping billions of tax dollars into it, I’d say we’ll soon reach the point where AIG won’t be too big to fail, and then we can stop giving them money.”
It appears that the Associated Press has learned that there are Christians like Saddleback pastor Rick Warren who invoke the name of Jesus (!) when they pray and that it may offend some — notably people like journalists who hold to a faith that relies on human understanding alone. Warren, for his part, played it coy:
Warren did not answer directly when asked whether he would dedicate his prayer to Jesus. In a statement Tuesday to The Associated Press, Warren would say only that, “I’m a Christian pastor so I will pray the only kind of prayer I know how to pray.”
“Dedicate” his prayer to Jesus? What kind of people are these Christians? The Associated Press investigates further and finds this, courtesy of the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, who invoked the name of Jesus at George W. Bush’s 2001 inauguration:
Evangelicals generally expect their clergymen to use Jesus’ name whenever and wherever they lead prayer. Many conservative Christians say cultural sensitivity goes way too far if it requires religious leaders to hide their beliefs.
“If Rick Warren does not pray in Jesus’ name, some folks are going to be very disappointed,” Caldwell said in a recent phone interview. “Since he’s evangelical, his own tribe, if you will, will have some angst if he does not do that.”
This Jesus thing is tricky. Everybody knows that the only people allowed to invoke his name are liberal politicians bent on shaming conservatives into paying way more taxes. When it comes from an acknowledged evangelical minister it can only mean proselytizing. Fortunately, the Associated Press is on the case. Stay tuned.
My younger brother, serving our country in Iraq, writes about what the mission looks like these days. Surprisingly, it looks less like a war and more like everyday life:
In 2006 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Muhammad Yunus for his work in giving micro-grants to people needing a little help to improve their small businesses. He showed the world how grants as little as $1,000 could change the lives of those (high-potential, low income) people. This week, I began handing out micro-grant applications to local sheiks (who will help me find and nominate the best candidates from the area).
I wish I could say that I thought of the idea. I am merely helping to facilitate the program in our area. The idea is simple yet powerful: meaningful growth and improvement can come from humble beginnings. This isn’t just an Iraqi phenomenon either; this micro-grant program is growing in the United States as well (see http://www.microgrants.net).
The types of applications I’ll be looking for will buy tools for that small engine repair shop; it will buy refrigeration for the local butcher to keep his products safe and hygienic. It will add a sewing machine to the local clothing shop, it will add workers to these shops, it will expand the economic base and capacity of this area.
As my brother writes, none of this kind of work would be possible without first securing the area. So, in other words, there has been significant progress made in Iraq. When you hear about reporters throwing their shoes at the president of the United States, remember that there’s more news out there than what gets on the network.
Greg Koukl, who does the Stand to Reason radio broadcast — also available as a podcast — gives three questions we should ask when reading Newsweek’s “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage”:
1. What do they want you to believe?
2. What are the reasons they offer in support of this idea they want you to believe?
3. Are the reasons good ones?
Koukl reviews the article and goes through these questions on the podcast.
When the economy is struggling, and your industry is on a steady decline, what is your next move? Well, in the case of Newsweek, you decide to become something totally different and, in the process, spit at a good deal of your subscriber base. Is it working? If is if you want to shed circulation and jobs, as reported by the Wall Street Journal:
Newsweek could subtract anywhere from 500,000 to one million copies from its current guarantee of 2.6 million, according to people familiar with the magazine’s thinking. That Newsweek is exploring a rate-base cut was first reported by the trade publication Folio.
Newsweek's highly controversial cover story comes as it is dropping subscribers and guarantees to advertisers.
The WSJ reported Newsweek “has emphasized commentary on hot-button issues, such as gay marriage, by big-name journalists like editor Jon Meacham and international editor Fareed Zakaria, as well as contributions from political operatives and academics like Michael Beschloss and Sean Wilentz.” And while looking at these issues is not in itself something to be up in arms about, it’s the way Newsweek has been going about it that has driven — or about to — subscribers and advertisers away:
Mr. Meacham said recently that Newsweek has never been an objective summarizer of the week’s events, or “AP on nicer paper,” though he acknowledged a greater emphasis lately on editorializing. “We are trying to be more provocative,” he said.
This week’s cover story, “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage,” is a case in point. The story spawned an organized campaign to get readers to cancel their subscriptions and elicited so many angry emails that Newsweek Chief Executive Tom Ascheim had to open a new email account to handle the added volume, a company spokesman said.
For those who subscribed thinking they were getting “AP on nicer paper,” the shift to provocation was jarring and, mostly, unwelcome. Without any rebuttal or guidance from a theologian, lines like this are tossed out by religion editor Lisa Miller in her piece “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage” (emphasis mine):
The Bible does condemn gay male sex in a handful of passages. Twice Leviticus refers to sex between men as “an abomination” (King James version), but these are throwaway lines in a peculiar text given over to codes for living in the ancient Jewish world, a text that devotes verse after verse to treatments for leprosy, cleanliness rituals for menstruating women and the correct way to sacrifice a goat—or a lamb or a turtle dove. Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on haircuts or blood sacrifices; our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions. Why would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a slave?
Of course, this kind of writing did not go unnoticed. MZ Hemingway at GetReligion.org gives a lengthy excoriation of Miller and her work:
When I started looking at the media coverage of this hot topic, I had to do just that. As a libertarian, I was unfamiliar with why people thought the state should define marriage, much less why it should be defined in such a way as to limit it to a certain number or sex of people. And what I found is that there is an unbelievable wealth of argument in favor of traditional marriage. And most of it is based (no, not in the fevered imaginations of what Hollywood and the media elite think religious conservatives believe) but in NaturalLaw. In this way of thinking, society defines marriage as a sexual union between a husband and wife, based around the ideas that babies are created via intercourse, that procreation is necessary for the survival of society and that babies need fathers as well as mothers. So the entire premise of this article is wrong, if you look at it that way.
But if you are going to pretend that opposition to same-sex marriage is based Sola Scriptura, could we at least get our Scripture right?
This is such hackery that it’s offensive. Abraham and Sarah, while certainly noted for their eventual trust in God were basically poster children for marital disobedience when they didn’t trust God to provide them with children. Even though he promised them they would have offspring. Sarah was a jealous and cruel slavemaster and Abraham was pliant and cowardly during their Hagar offensive. In fact, if you are reading the Old Testament as a self-improvement book based on anything other than the commandments from God, you are an idiot. God’s chosen people, some of them with great and abiding faith, are sinful disasters — the lot of them.
I hold sacred the New Testament model of marriage and find Miller’s comments to be beneath contempt. I also wonder what, if anything, she has read from the New Testament.
When my husband read the opening graph of this train wreck of a hit piece, he wondered if these words of Jesus, found in the Gospel of Matthew, indicated indifference to family:
And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Robert P. George was honored for his service to the nation serving on the President' Council on Bioethics
Robert P. George, who has served our nation on the President’s Council on Bioethics, was honored this week with the Presidential Citizens Medal for “exemplary deeds of service for the nation. It is one of the highest honors the President can confer upon a civilian, second only to the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”
The press release at the White House’s Web site said this about George:
With wisdom and integrity, Dr. Robby George has brought forceful analytic clarity to the study of America’s ideals and institutions. He has helped strengthen our Nation’s system of ordered liberty by exploring enduring questions of American constitutional law and Western political theory. The United States honors Robby George for his many contributions to our civic life.
Why should we care? We should because it was George who was among the scholars, reseachers, scientists and theologians who advised the president when he made his landmark decision to limit embryonic stem cell research to existing lines in 2001. George, who lectures on constitutional interpretation, civil liberties and philosophy of law at Princeton University, is a solid conservative who is pro-life and pro-family. In other words, he is the polar opposite of his Princeton colleague Peter Singer.
George operates at high velocity, moving easily within the worlds of academia, politics, and religion. He serves on President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics, where, says council chairman Leon Kass, George brings “enormous integrity and decency. He is an absolutely lucid and careful thinker, deeply committed to the dignity of the human person from its earliest beginnings.” Like Socrates, Kass notes, George meets his interlocutors “on their own grounds but show[s] them that their arguments take them to places they don’t want to go.”
The idea that is repeatedly bandied about is that there is a disconnect between being a rational, thinking person and a person of deep faith. In answer to that, we can merely point to people like Robert George and how he lives his faith.
Moshe Holtzberg, the 2-year-old orphan of the rabbi and his wife slain in the Mumbai Jewish center, cries during a memorial service at a synagogue in Mumbai, India, Monday, Dec. 1, 2008.
The world cries out: Who can hold us? Only one man. Only one man can save us.
ys recordings. Michael has been on the road with the band over the past weeks working alongside Peter in what has been a positive and enjoyable experience for both parties. It has been a graceful process that both Peter and Michael have worked through as they prepare to make the change in the coming weeks. 
Rockstanding 
You must be logged in to post a comment.