Christian News Link Depot 12/16/07

CFP: Mike, we are a pluralistic Judeo-Christian nation

Baptists, like Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Quakers and other branches of the Judeo-Christian tradition, have held different views of theology. But there was always a common thread in Judeo-Christian morality and traditions and in recorded in Holy Scripture. As a result, Christian America has long been the most sympathetic nation on Earth to Jews, especially in politics. Jews were elected to public office in colonial America and this continued throughout the 19th Century when Jews in the antebellum South held positions in the United States Senate, state supreme courts and governorships. Today Jews are represented in the Senate far out of proportion to their percentage of the population, yet no one is troubled by this. We may well be troubled by the Leftism of Barbara Boxer, but not by her Jewishness. In fact, we may well wish that Barbara Boxer thought and spoke more like a devout Jew and less like a Leftist nut.

Once, half of the states of the Union had established state churches – a particular version of Christianity was the “official version.” It was not the Supreme Court or the Bill of Rights that changed this. It was the people of these states themselves who insisted that we have a broadly based Judeo-Christian political foundation, but not a particular version of that tradition. Mike, that is the way America should be: Judeo-Christian, but tolerant.

WorldNetDaily: Church shootings on rise in U.S.

Church shootings, in the headlines because of the attacks by Matthew Murray, 24, of Englewood, Colo., on two Christian groups last weekend, are on the rise across the United States, even though they're not yet at epidemic proportions.

A tabulation of church shootings, or those closely related to a church setting, was done by Gary Cass, chairman of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, and include 10 such attacks over the last four years, including Murray's two attacks.

He said a brief search found the following shootings, before last weekend's attacks: * August 12, 2007: A lone gunman, Eiken Elam Saimon, opened fire in a Missouri Micronesian church, killing a pastor and two other churchgoers. * May 20, 2007: A standoff between police and a suspect in the shootings of three people in a Moscow, Idaho, Presbyterian Church ended with three dead, including one police officer. * Although not at a church building, the Oct. 2, 2006, attack in Lancaster County, Pa., by a gunman who killed five girls and then himself at an Amish school targeted a religious site. * May 21, 2006: Louisiana. Four were killed by a man at Jesus Christ Church. * Feb. 26, 2006: Michigan. Two people were killed at Zion Hope Missionary Baptist Church by a man who reportedly went to the church looking for his girlfriend. He later killed himself. * April 9, 2005: A 27-year-old airman died after being shot at a church in College Park, Ga., where he had once worked as a security guard. * March 12, 2005: A man walked into the services of the Living Church of God in Milwaukee and open fired immediately, killing seven people. * Oct. 5, 2003: A woman opened fire in Turner Monumental AME church in Kirkwood, east of Atlanta, killing the pastor and two others. * Sept. 16, 1999: Seven young people were killed when a man opened fire during a prayer service for teen-agers at the Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.

A Blog For All: Colorado Heroes

One
was an unarmed Vietnam veteran who exposed himself to fire from the
Colorado shooter, while the other was an armed volunteer security guard
who risked her own life to confront the violent shooter, who had
already killed four other people in two separate incidents.
Together, they saved hundreds of people at the New Life Church.

A
report indicates that the shooter died of a self inflicted gunshot
wound after being hit four times by Assam. This doesn't diminish the
heroism of Bourbannais or Assam because without their confrontation
with Murray, he would have continued his shooting rampage until he was
either cornered and killed or he ran out of bullets.

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