c. 2008 Religion News Service
Creationists launch scientific journal
(RNS) Answers in Genesis, the Christian ministry that founded the $27 million Creation Museum in Kentucky last year, has now launched an online technical journal to publish studies consistent with its biblical views.
The Answers Research Journal will disseminate research conducted by creationist theologians and scientists “that are consistent with the biblical account of origins.”
Ken Hamm, president of Answers in Genesis, said submissions will be peer- reviewed, but the journal’s guidelines discourage asking non-creationists to conduct those reviews.
The journal is needed because of academic bias in most scientific journals against creationists, Hamm said.
“As soon as you overtly say it’s to do with creation, they say it’s not science and refuse to publish it,” he said.
Earlier this month, a top panel of U.S. scientists said that belief in the theory of evolution and religious faith are not incompatible, but that creationism has no place in science classes.
The panel also laid out scientific evidence supporting the theory of evolution.
_ Daniel Burke
Leaders urge Bush to redeem `shameful’ legacy
WASHINGTON (RNS) Catholic and evangelical social justice leaders on Thursday (Jan. 24) urged President Bush to use his upcoming State of the Union address to turn around what they called his faltering moral legacy.
Frequently referring to the state of American public policy as “shameful,” the representatives of five major religious organizations said Bush has sidestepped pressing religious concerns, despite his recurrent religious rhetoric.
Specifically, they said the White House has failed to deal with growing poverty at home and abroad, turned a blind eye to torture, ignored climate change, and neglected the human suffering from the war in Iraq.
“We have yet to fully sort out the legacy of an explicitly evangelical president, who sadly has had such a truncated vision of what a moral leadership looks like,” said the Rev. David Gushee, president of Evangelicals for Human Rights.
“I am hopeful that the evangelical community as a whole has been chastened by that and is open to reconsidering what we think a truly evangelical moral leadership would look like.“
The four other participants were the Rev. Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA; Ron Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action; the Rev. Paul de Vries, board member of the National Association of Evangelicals; and Sister Anne Curtis of the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy.
Gushee, an outspoken opponent of torture, said it is “hard to overstate the devastating effect of this policy on the moral standing of the U.S. in the worldâÂ?¦”
Sider, however, praised the Bush administration for its endorsement of faith-based initiatives, which “leveled the playing field” for religious groups seeking federal funds, even though Sider said Washington has failed to provide enough money for church-based social services.
For her part, Curtis urged increased funding for the estimated 4.2 million refugees who have fled the violence in Iraq. “Not only have they been horribly traumatized by the violence of the war, but they continue to struggle to find and meet their most basic of human necessities,” she said.
_ Matthew Streib
Birmingham churches on potential heritage sites list
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS) The National Park Service announced Tuesday (Jan. 22) that two Birmingham churches significant to the civil rights movement are under consideration as World Heritage sites.
Bethel Baptist Church and Sixteenth Street Baptist Church are on a tentative list that will be nominated over the next 10 years under a new category, “Civil Rights Sites in the Southern United States.”
A 1963 bombing at Sixteenth Street Baptist killed four young girls and helped galvanize the civil rights movement. Bethel Baptist was bombed three times between 1956 and 1962 and served as a staging ground for civil rights leaders.
There are 830 places in the world _ including 20 in the United States _ that have achieved recognition on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage list. The U.S. list includes the Grand Canyon, Independence Hall and the Statue of Liberty.
Other sites being recommended for the list include the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona; Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks in Ohio; San Antonio Franciscan Missions in Texas; Mount Vernon in Virginia; aviation sites in Dayton, Ohio; and Frank Lloyd Wright buildings across the country.
_ Greg Garrison
Quote of the Day: Cheryl Sanders of Howard University School of Divinity
(RNS) “It has been the evangelicals who have been the problem and not the problem-solvers.”
_ The Rev. Cheryl Sanders, senior pastor of the Third Street Church of God in Washington and professor of Christian ethics at Howard University School of Divinity, speaking at a discussion in Washington about evangelicals and the 2008 elections.
KRE/CM END RNS
