In Monday’s RNS report Kevin Eckstrom writes that the largest-ever church unity group was launched on Friday: Leaders of 34 U.S. church bodies have officially launched the broadest-ever Christian unity organization in American history, and said fighting poverty will be its first priority. Christian Churches Together in the USA was formally inaugurated on Friday (March 31) after a three-day meeting outside Atlanta. A public kickoff is scheduled at the group’s scheduled meeting next February. The looseknit group brings together five Christian “families” who have long been divided by historical and theological differences, including Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelicals and Pentecostals, historically black churches and Orthodox churches. Together, the five “families” represent more than 100 million American Christians. The nation’s largest Protestant body, the Southern Baptist Convention, has said it will not participate.

Andrew Westmoreland will become the 18th president of Samford University, reports Charles J. Dean: It’s not every day a university president admits he told a whopper to a former governor. Especially when the president is head of a Baptist school. Meet Andrew Westmoreland-Andy to just about everybody at Ouachita Baptist University, situated in this town of about 10,000 about an hour’s drive south of Little Rock. At the end of May, Westmoreland will leave Ouachita-a school he has called home as a student, employee, teacher, administrator and president since first stepping foot on campus as a freshman 31 years ago-to become the 18th president at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., affiliated with the Alabama State Baptist Convention. When first asked to consider the job, Westmoreland said he would pray about it. He didn’t, even though he was asked later if he did. “Maybe the Lord was a little put out that I had lied about praying,” said Westmoreland in explaining how he ended up with the job.

Frank Bentayou reviews “American Theocracy” by Kevin Phillips, in which the author looks at what he sees as the decline of the separation of church and state: In “Wealth and Democracy,” maverick political and economic thinker Kevin Phillips urged readers to consider how “plutocracy”-from the Greek, meaning rule by the rich-is a fitting characterization of our nation’s governance. His point was that money has become the driving force of government in the United States. In his 12th book, Phillips examines another powerful political motivator: religion. He bluntly calls this one “American Theocracy” and fills more than 400 pages with a blistering vision of the decline of what the Constitution holds, well, sacred: separation of church and state. Theocracy means government by divine authority. Phillips argues that radical religious beliefs have penetrated the course of a nation whose founders intended its government to remain separate from whatever theology citizens embraced-or not.