Religious references clearer in first draft of AA manual. The basic text used for Alcoholics Anonymous programs, known as The Big Book, initially used stronger religious language but was reduced to appeal to a wider audience, The Washington Post reported. Hazelden, a nonprofit addiction treatment center, will release the working manuscript of the book written by AA’s co-founder, Bill Wilson, including hand-written edits and comments, according to The Post. The changes marked in red, black and green reveal a debate on how openly God should be a part of addiction recovery in the published manuscript, according to The Book That Started It All: The Original Working Manuscript of Alcoholics Anonymous. The adoption of more vague religious terms in The Big Book, including phrases like “higher power” and the “God of your understanding,” show how Wilson scaled back the religious tone to engage a broader group of people. Worship terms also were taken out of the revised version of the book. The seventh step of the 12-step recovery program, which is “humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings” originally stated “humbly, on our knees, asked him to remove our shortcomings—holding nothing back.

Land-use disputes often involve religious, ethnic minorities. Muslims, Jews and Buddhists figure prominently in religious freedom investigations by the Justice Department, a new report shows. The department released the report on the 10th anniversary of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a law that aims to protect both religious liberty in zoning matters and free exercise of religion for prisoners and residents of government-run nursing homes. Of 51 investigations opened in the last decade, 16 involved Muslims, Jews or Buddhists. Half of the department’s probes of land-use violations involving Christians involved racial or ethnic minorities. This year, against a rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric after an Islamic community center was proposed near Ground Zero, the department has opened eight cases of possible religious discrimination against Muslims since May. A total of 18 cases of possible bias against Muslims have been monitored by the department since the 9/11 attacks.

FBI erred in targeting interfaith center. A Department of Justice inspector concluded the FBI improperly targeted U.S. advocacy organizations for surveillance, including the Thomas Merton Center, an interfaith group focused on nonviolence. A report issued by the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general said the surveillance of a 2002 anti-war rally was the result of an “ill-conceived” assignment to a probationary agent on a “slow work day” to determine if terrorism suspects might be in attendance. Other groups included in the report included the Catholic Worker movement, a network of Christian pacifists.

–Compiled from Religion News Service

America’s rural churches were built upon and grew from a strong sense of community. Although many rural congregations now are in decline, that community reliance may be the key to spiritual renewal and to thriving ministry.

Some rural church experts believe recovering a sense of community or building upon it may give congregations new life, not necessarily in terms of numbers, but in vitality and effectiveness.

“It may be time for rural church (members) to change from (the attitude) ‘what can my church do for me’ to ‘what can my church do for my community,’ said Fran Schnarre, director of educational ministries for the Missouri School of Religion Center for Rural Ministry.

Community development

Some churches, such as Chatham (Va.) Baptist, are partnering with government, community service organizations and schools—and they are crossing denominational lines—to concentrate on transformation or redevelopment of their areas.

Chatham is among communities in a broad area called “Southside” Virginia that stretches from South Boston/Halifax to Chatham/Danville to Martinsville and where coordinated “reimagination” is taking place.

“Churches are involved in various ways, sometimes as lead innovators, and sometimes as stakeholders in the community,” Pastor Chuck Warnock said. An expert in community collaboration, Warnock is a rural church consultant and writes Outreach magazine’s “Small Church, Big Idea” column.

Since 2004, Chatham Baptist has led or assisted in several community efforts, including starting a Boys and Girls Club, constructing the Community Center at Chatham and founding a community music school for children.

Freelance ministry developer and coach Julia Kuhn Wallace agrees community involvement reconnects the church to people. “Churches that get involved attract people to them,” she said.

Wallace, a member of the Rural Church Network of the U.S. and Canada, previously served as director of the United Methodist Small Churches and Shared Ministry program. Forming partnerships can allow a community to provide some of the services and programs residents need or want.

“Less that 19 percent of rural populations experience a true decline in total population,” Wallace said. “But most are experiencing a shift. Others move in but they are on the fringe of the community.”

Many of the newcomers are the new rural poor—which puts a strain on the tax base, she added.

Wallace is seeing revitalization in those congregations that have chosen to partner with others to meet needs, she said.

Morality and ethics

“People still look to the church for spiritual activities,” Wallace emphasized.

Even a small church can provide spiritual support. People need support for life changes and struggles they face. A congregation can connect to its community by offering programs such as Divorce Recovery or a prayer ministry.

A retired professor of economics believes the church serves its community by taking the lead in sustainability efforts.

“It’s not just about science and economics and politics. … It is a moral and ethical obligation,” noted John Ikerd, University of Missouri professor emeritus.

“If the church won’t do it, how can we expect others to do it?”

The church connects to the community by learning what rural living means to its residents. Congregations must take time to find out what people view as the community’s desirable qualities and what they want. Church members must discuss the quality of life beyond economic aspects, he said.

Tradition

Sometimes a congregation can lose itself in the glory of its past. But in some cases, tradition can be used to help residents reconnect to one another.

Rural communities in the past have been tightly knit, explained Kenny Sherin, a North Carolinian currently working on a doctorate in rural sociology at the University of Missouri. “Churches have a place in encouraging that sense of community,” he said.

Sherin served as pastor of Hester Baptist Church in Oxford, N.C., more than five years before moving to Missouri, where he and his wife share pastoral duties at Nashville Baptist Church, a rural congregation near Columbia.

A church can reconnect to its community by helping residents regain their sense of place and heritage. “The church is one of the few institutions that often are still associated with the community,” he said.

In many small towns, the schools consolidated, and other institutions moved out. “The church is the only institution that can keep the heritage alive in their communities,” he said. They can use heritage as a way to draw people together and build community.

Find a niche

“Be a niche church,” advised Farley, director of missions for Pickens Baptist Association in Alabama and co-author of The Rechurching of Rural America. Farley had served with the Southern Baptist Convention Home Mission Board’s rural church program.

Congregations must no longer seek to be all things to all people within their church field. Instead, they must focus on the ministry they do best, he said.

Cowboy and biker congregations are the most recognized niche churches today, forming around the interest or lifestyle and meeting needs. Warnock cited a biker church that assists residents in finding jobs.

A church also can choose a ministry niche. While it isn’t known as a “children’s church,” Clarksburg (Mo.) Baptist Church realized its niche is ministry to children in its small town of about 400 residents. Located within walking distance of the community’s only school, the church offers an after-school program and several targeted activities, including summer sports camps. In about 15 months, Sunday school and worship attendance rose significantly, as did baptisms.

Fellowship gatherings can attract people who otherwise would not hear the gospel. Arvon Baptist Church in Buckingham County, Va., provides a monthly Sunday morning breakfast that reaches 20 to 25 men.

Wallace is seeing a rise in senior adult ministries and in medical outreach through clinics for seniors and children. “I think the possibilities are endless,” she said. “These times call for creative responses.”

More than Sunday

A congregation’s efforts to tap into or strengthen its sense of community will open opportunities to minister. “Exciting things can happen … but it requires a lot of prayer … and moving out beyond the church walls,” Schnarre said.

“Rural and small-town churches will always exist, because people in small communities see church as more than just Sunday morning. Church in rural areas is part social gathering, part family reunion, part worship and study and part pastoral caregiver,” Warnock explained.

Suburbs are changing ethnically and socioeconomically, creating ministry opportunities and challenges for churches across the country. Here are some tips from leaders about engaging changing neighborhoods effectively for Christ.

• Get the facts. Perception doesn’t always match reality. Discover who is living in the neighborhood. Look at statistical information on demographics. Visit with the principal of the nearest elementary school. Elementary schools typically are among the best sources of demographic information because they cover small geographic areas, and principals can help churches understand what new populations are start-ing to come through the school system. Elementary schools also can provide information about what languages are being spoken in children’s homes.

• Build relationships. Once a church understands who is living in a neighborhood, members and leaders can begin building relationships with new groups. Is there a new ethnic restaurant in the area? Get to know the owners. Is there an ethnic community group? Get to know the leaders. Discover their needs and ways a congregation might be able to help them.

•  Pray. Let God guide a congregation. Allow God to give it a vision for ministry.

• Educate. Church leaders need to communi-cate what diversity truly means to a community. Explain the benefits and opportunities of living in a diverse area. Discuss how God calls each Christian to be a missionary and calls his followers to minister in specific locations. Cast a vision that includes how a church is going to minister in a diverse setting.

• Act intentionally. God calls Christians to make disciples, so get after it. Stick to executing the church’s vision for ministry. Working through relation-ships, there will be unexpected surprises and setbacks. Methods may need to be tweaked along the way. In the end, the church will learn from serving a diverse population and will have the opportunity to share the hope of Christ with people who have yet to embrace it.

Looking for a partner on the journey? For practical help, cross-cultural training, encouragement and support, call (888) 244-9400.

Sources: Patty Lane, BGCT director of intercultural ministries; Robert Creech, Truett Seminary professor of Christian ministries and director of pastoral ministries.

WACO—Rural churches, particularly those within driving distance of a seminary or denominational college or university, often become training grounds for ministerial staff.

“Some churches see that as their ministry,” noted Judy Battles, coordinator for pastoral ministries at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary.

Churches within about a 100-mile radius often look to Truett for all types of ministerial staff. And lack of funds can be the driving force behind choosing a seminary student to fill a leadership position.

“Some (chose students) because that is what they can afford,” Battles added. “Some do it because they only need a part-time minister. But some do so because they see themselves as a training ground.”

The distinction comes in size rather than in location, she emphasized. Financial pressures also cause small churches in the area’s larger cities to consider calling a seminary student. “The smaller churches don’t generally have the funds a graduate would expect,” she said.

Tarris Rosell, professor of ethics and ministry praxis at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Shawnee, Kan., noted most students already are in a ministry position by the time they reach the practicum courses the seminary requires. And most serve in urban or suburban settings. But a few rural churches near Kansas City have garnered reputations as training churches.

Elm Grove Baptist Church, an American Baptist congregation in Miami County, Kan., primarily called seminary students for several years. Noel MacClymont, who serves as volunteer coordinator at Central and has a reputation for taking students under her wing, is a member at Elm Grove.

Central graduate Jan Smith is the current pastor, the first female to lead the congregation founded in 1879. She has served nine years, just about the longest tenure of any pastor since 1970. The four pastors before her also had been students.

Although the congregation loved its pastors, they were ready to see if pastoral stability might help the church grow. “When I visited with the search committee, they acknowledged that they needed to do something, or they would die. They were averaging about 20 to 22, and they were determined they would do whatever it took to keep the church alive,” Smith explained.

Smith, who describes herself as a “second-career pastor,” attended seminary as a “more mature” student. The church became her training ground in pastoral duties and responsibilities, and she helped them see women as capable and gifted pastors.

Some members had no problem calling a woman as pastor, but others did. “It was a matter of them facing it point-blank,” Smith said.

The committee talked to a couple of other seminary students as well. Smith said she felt her maturity might have given her an edge that allowed the committee to look beyond gender.

She believes churches, especially small rural ones, may become more willing to consider women as pastors because of fewer options. “Generally a small church, particularly if it is far away from a metro area, is more likely to consider a woman because their pool of resources for leaders is smaller,” she said.

Rural churches in America face a host of challenges as they seek to continue ministry in their communities.

The continued population shift from rural areas to urban centers can drain rural churches, noted Chuck Warnock, an expert in community collaboration and pastor of Chatham (Va.) Baptist Church. That shift contributes to an aging membership and a lack of young people in rural churches and declining attendance.

Loss of members leads to other problems—reduced offerings and tighter budgets. A shortage of money and resources often means a church cannot provide a variety in programs and activities, said Gary Farley, director of missions of Pickens Baptist Association in Alabama. From 1984 to 1996, Farley served in the rural church program for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board.

As congregations shrink, remaining members face a leadership crunch as well, Nashville, Tenn.-based freelance ministry developer and coach Julia Kuhn Wallace believes. Many rural areas face rapid turnover in clergy, even in denominations that appoint ministers to specific congregations.

“Younger clergy are less likely to stay to help turn a church around,” she said.

Farley agreed rural churches often have difficulty keeping a minister. They also find it increasingly difficult to find competent part-time or bivocational pastors, noted Fran Schnarre, director of educational ministries for Missouri School of Religion’s Center for Rural Ministry.

As the number of worshippers decreases, a leadership crisis also may develop because fewer people are available to develop and train as church leaders.

Societal change also contributes to the strain on rural churches. While change has affected each generation, the pace of change today strikes many churches as insurmountable, said Wallace, a member of the Rural Church Network of the U.S. and Canada.

That pace, Wallace believes, has contributed to a disconnect between the church and its community, particularly in rural areas.

A decline in membership does not necessarily indicate the same decline in population but may signal a population change the church has failed to notice.

“The population becomes underserved by or invisible to church members,” she said.

Wallace cited the example of a church whose members recognized young families had moved into their area and wanted to host a Vacation Bible School for them.

They recruited teachers, purchased materials and advertised for a Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to noon event. But no one came.

Disconcerted, church members discovered that, in most homes, both parents worked, and most children were placed in daycare. If they had offered an evening event, the church might have been packed.

Today’s challenges for rural congregations can lead to what Schnarre believes is the greatest challenge of all—loss of vision.

“They often have a hard time developing a vision for what God has for them in this time and place,” she said.

Depending upon the study, estimates of the number of American churches range from 350,000 to 400,000. Of that number, about 90 percent average 300 or less, with the median averaging 75 to 90 on Sunday morning.

About half of this country’s church members attend those churches, and many are in rural areas.

Despite the challenges, “rural small churches are still the backbone of religious life in America,” Warnock believes.

Brand New Church in northern Arkansas and Fairy Baptist Church in Central Texas bear little resemblance to each other.

Pastor Shannon O’Dell leads a multi-campus, contemporary-style church in rural Arkansas that draws about 2,000 worshippers in-person from throughout the region and another 1,500 to its Internet-based “iCampus.” Pastor Bob Ray has served 45 years at Fairy Baptist Church, and the average number of worshippers on Sunday morning roughly equals his years of service.

O’Dell insists church members should “stand under” the pastor’s leadership, allow elders to make major administrative decisions and not get “bogged down in bureaucratic democracy.” Ray leads, but Fairy Baptist Church makes its decisions in regularly scheduled business meetings where every member can voice ideas and vote his or her convictions.

Brand New Church and Fairy Baptist Church follow different worship styles and appeal to different kinds of people.

Even so, O’Dell and Ray agree on some things. Both feel called to long-term service in a rural church. They agree with a basic precept of church growth: Everything that is alive grows. And they agree when it comes to rural churches, growth may need to be redefined—or at least put into perspective.

“Growth doesn’t mean you go from 31 to 2,000; it may mean going from 31 to 66,” O’Dell writes in Transforming Church in Rural America: Breaking All the Rurals.

Pastors serving in rural communities must not settle for less than excellence, but they also should not surrender to the “bigger is better” mentality, O’Dell insists.

“If a guy has 10,000 people coming to a church in a city of millions, he’s just barely scratching the surface. But if you’re in a town of a couple thousand and you have a dozen or so servant-leaders? Man, I’m telling you, God can use that team to reach the vast majority of your community and county,” O’Dell writes.

From the time O’Dell arrived at Southside Baptist Church in South Lead Hill, Ark., about eight years ago and through its growth and transition into Brand New Church, he noted, the congregation learned how to “produce excellence on a barbwire budget” by equipping laity for service.

Shannon O’Dell, pastor of Brand New Church in rural northern Arkansas, insists pastors serving rural communities should not surrender to a “bigger is better” mentality.

Brand New Church committed to “raise up leaders” from its own membership who would prove their dedication by working for free before they ever would be considered as paid staff.

“We have more than 35 on staff, but the majority are not paid,” he explained. “We believe in the equipping of the saints. Sometimes, people are robbed because positions are filled with paid staff.”

When economic setbacks forced budget cutbacks at Brand New Church, nine paid staff had to be laid off. “Six of those staff are still with us, some of them serving in the same roles as volunteers,” O’Dell noted.

Because most staff serve as volunteers and work at jobs in the communities where they live, they have opportunities to reach people in ways a full-time minister on a church staff never could, O’Dell insisted.

“Some of the most effective ministers I know are bivocational,” he said.

Fairy Baptist Church didn’t have a full-time pastor on the field until Ray retired a few years ago. For more than four decades, he served bivocationally—working most of that time in secular employment and for several years with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

“It took 10 years before our church folks really believed we would stay here,” Ray said.

“In 1975 when I graduated from seminary, the church expected me to leave. But when the pulpit committees came and we turned them down, that’s when the people here really began to let us pastor them—to let us into their lives.

“That’s when they let us lead, because they didn’t expect us to walk away and leave it all in their hands. It’s when we earned their trust.”

As trust grew, Ray led the church to expand its vision.

“People won’t come to a church that is dying,” he said. “We’re growing, but it’s kingdom growth.”

Fairy Baptist Church invests in lives for the benefit of God’s work in this world without regard as to whether it benefits the local congregation, he explained.

“We’re very rural. Ours is the only church for 10 miles in any direction,” Ray said. He acknowledges limited potential for great numerical growth when the largest town in the county has a population less than 3,000, and that’s half an hour away from Fairy.

Nevertheless, Fairy Baptist Church commits much of its energy and resources to reaching children and youth who probably never will be adult leaders of that congregation.

“People say young people are the future of the church. Our young people are the future of some church, but it’s not necessarily here,” Ray said. “We don’t necessarily want them to stay here. … We want them to get a good education and go where they can make a good living and make a good life for themselves.”

Fairy Baptist Church seeks growth on two tracks, he explained—congregational growth by reaching retirees who move to rural Hamilton County and kingdom growth through children and youth.

Ray acknowledges the church developed its vision gradually over decades of change both in the church and in the community it serves. When he arrived 45 years ago, 100 percent of the church members made a living from agriculture and related businesses. Now, only a few are full-time farmers and ranchers.

As the church has grown to accept the changing reality of its tiny community, it also has grown in its sense of purpose.

“Our church spends a lot of money on youth and children because we see it as missions. … Our people don’t ask what our church has to gain. That’s not even an issue. We’re looking at kingdom returns on our investment,” he said. “Now it’s part of our DNA.”

SUGAR LAND—When The Fort Bend Church was preparing for its launch service in a school six years ago, a church member asked Pastor Byron Stevenson a simple question: “How many chairs should we put out?”

Stevenson didn’t know how many people to expect.

“We just said however many chairs the school has, we’ll put all those out and see what God does,” Stevenson said, reflecting upon that day.

They weren’t enough to handle what God did.

Members scurried for additional seating as about 600 people worshipped together that first Sunday, packing out the school. Within a few weeks, about 200 people had committed to being part of the church, laying the groundwork for what is now a 2,600-member predominantly African-American congregation outside Houston.

“We can grow more,” Stevenson said. “In the next five years, I’m expecting us to double in size, if not before then. It’s a suburb that’s fast growing. Fort Bend County is still a largely untapped church community.”

From Stevenson’s perspective—and many other leaders agree—The Fort Bend Church represents a sign of the opportunities for congregations as suburban America diversifies ethnically. For the first time in the country’s history, most ethnic minorities live in suburbs, according to a recent Brookings Institute report.

Texas metro areas Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio lag slightly behind the national movement, but they are trending in that direction. Although this shift may challenge some congregations to change their models of ministry, it also opens avenues through which Christians can minister to their new neighbors.

“People from around the world continue to come Texas,” said Paul Atkinson, who leads Texas Baptists’ church starting efforts. “That means the mission field here is expanding, and Texas Baptists must be intentional about reaching people for Christ—whether that be launching a ministry, redesigning an outreach effort or starting a church.”

The ethnic population of suburbs has been on the rise for some time, but it has crested above 50 percent in recent years, noted Joel Kotkin, distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures with Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. People, regardless of ethnic background, are drawn to the suburbs for similar reasons—cheaper housing, more land and better schools for their children.

Growth in suburban population comes not primarily from people moving out from the cities—although there is some of that—but from immigrants who enter the United States and settle in suburbs, Kotkin said. They are drawn to enclaves of culturally similar people, he noted.

“As soon as the refugees get established, then they’re going to try to find connections to people of their culture,” said Patty Lane, director of intercultural ministries for the Baptist General Convention of Texas. “If there have been waves of people in their culture, they’re already going to be living in the suburbs. People may stay in the cities for six months, but they’re going to move out.”

While suburban diversification presents opportunities, it also may prove to challenge some congregations, numerous sources noted.

Churches will have to be intentional about reaching out to everyone who lives in their communities. That may mean adjusting outreach strategies, creating new ministries and ceasing old efforts.

Russell Diwa, pastor of Biblical Community Church in Richardson, said diversity is like an odd-shaped present beneath a Christmas tree. People are leery of it because they fear the uncertain. But if they embrace it, they will discover the gift that is there.

“People are scared to open the gift because it is unknown,” Diwa said.

Several years ago, Crestview Baptist Church in Georgetown began seeing an influx of Hispanics into its area. The church decided to serve the lower-income, increasingly Hispanic neighborhood located behind the church campus, as well as the larger Georgetown area.

Crestview expanded efforts to cultivate relationships with people in that neighborhood through the years, and now about 100 people from there participate in worship services weekly.

Christ calls his followers to reach out to everyone, Crestview Pastor Dan Wool-dridge said, not simply people who are similar culturally or ethnically.

Ethnic diversity may push some churches to change the way they do evangelism, but the church must respond to that challenge with a renewed commitment to sharing the gospel, he said.

“I think it always stretches you a little bit,” Wooldridge said. “There’s a certain amount of desire for homogenous congregations that people naturally have. There’s a risk involved. I think it’s a risk you have to take. I’ve always said if you will reach whoever you can, God will take care of the rest.”

Kotkin believes there will be more of these types of congregations in the future.

The neighborhood church that mirrors its community will become more normative, he said. There, people will find relationships and help—particularly for younger families and older individuals.

By providing services to a neighborhood, congregations are lightening the financial burden for people in a time when it already is difficult to achieve the American dream.

SALT LAKE CITY (RNS)—Mormons have been making headlines across the nation—from HBO’s Big Love to California’s Proposition 8, from American Idol wannabe David Archuleta to Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to conservative icon Glenn Beck.

Church spokesman Michael Otterson writes essays for The Washington Post, and Mormonism is included in a new book, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. Two more universities are poised to launch “Mormon Studies” courses.

It’s all given the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a glimpse of playing in religion’s big leagues.

Indeed, says Mormon blogger Jana Riess in Cincinnati, Mormonism is becoming part of the “mainstream national conversation in a way that it wasn’t 10 years ago.”

Such visibility could partially explain why the church-owned Deseret News laid off nearly half its Salt Lake City staff and plans to tap a stable of “correspondents” as it charts a new future beyond Utah’s Wasatch Mountains.

The more prominent profile also may have helped propel its flagship school, Brigham Young University, to bolt from the Mountain West Conference and sign a football broadcasting deal with ESPN, with a promise to fill stadiums across the country with true-blue BYU fans.

Taken together, these moves suggest to American religion scholar Jan Shipps that Mormon leaders are saying to themselves, “The world is changing, and we are going to change with it.”

The church is looking to a stage “that is much grander than the Intermountain West,” said Shipps, an eminent non-Mormon historian of Mormonism. “And especially grander than Utah.”

BYU journalism professor Joel Campbell said: “We have arrived. We are now well-known enough that we can do our own thing.” And, the former Deseret News columnist quips, “We are even big enough to be mocked.”

But is Mormonism big enough and secure enough to rise on the respectability ladder? Will far-flung readers flock to a revamped church-owned newspaper? Can BYU football score the same kind of national cachet as Notre Dame?

Clark Gilbert, CEO of the Deseret News, is confident the 160-year-old paper can lead the country’s journalistic revolution and increase the church’s status at the same time.

“We are not just a local paper; we have national reach and influence,” Gilbert recently told Doug Fabrizio, host of KUER’s RadioWest. “People read us all over the world. People care about us and our values. (They) will be motivated to contribute their voice because they share our values.”

Brigham Young launched the paper in 1850 to report the news from a Mormon perspective. Since then, the Mormon Diaspora has looked to the paper for coverage of their spiritual home away from home.

“I think Mormons who have never lived in Utah often have a very intense desire to be part of Mormon culture, which they perceive as emanating from Utah,” said Kristine Haglund, editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, in an e-mail from Boston.

She wonders, however, about the paper’s decision to write about national issues from a Mormon point of view.

“It’s not clear to me that there’s anything particularly Mormon about most Mormons’ Fox News-branded conservatism,” Haglund said. “The Deseret News may be aiming for the forehead of the national giant with a very small slingshot and some smallish rocks of Mormon tribalism.”

Kaimi Wenger, a Mormon lawyer and blogger in Southern California, said the desire for increased exposure conflicts with the church’s need for a “correlated message.”

“Our insecurities are actually exacerbated by the national platform,” Wenger said. “Mormons want to be taken seriously and accepted on their own terms, while, at the same time, they want tight message control so they can avoid difficult, complicated and possibly derailing conversations about polygamy and other touchy subjects.”

Likewise, Steve Evans, a Mormon lawyer in Seattle who founded the popular blog bycommonconsent.com in 2004, had his doubts. He gets most Mormon news directly from the church’s website, and sees many Deseret News articles as merely “devotional.”

“I would love to see a journalistic institution that actually did investigative journalism, that is, timely and impactful explorations on the church, not just puff pieces,” he said. “The Deseret News would like to do that, but I don’t know that they can.”

On the other hand, BYU’s jump—to Notre Dame-like independence in football and the West Coast Conference in other sports—has provided endless online fodder.

“I’m not sure BYU’s move is a deliberate part of any strategy to get a national presence for the church,” said David Campbell, a Mormon and a political scientist at Notre Dame. “It’s already not just a Utah-based church.”

It also remains to be seen whether Cougar games can attract the promised audience on ESPN, Campbell said. “Notre Dame does have a national constituency, and that is based on people’s tie to the school’s mystique.”

No matter why BYU and the News made the expansion moves, the Mormon church never can go back to being a little parochial enterprise, said Utah State University historian Philip Barlow, especially when universities are treating Mormonism as a serious course of study.

“We are important enough to invite this kind of scrutiny,” he said, “and rooted enough to endure it.”

Peggy Fletcher Stack writes for The Salt Lake Tribune.

ST. LOUIS (RNS)—The question has perplexed philosophers, theologians and scientists for thousands of years: At what point does human life begin?

Missouri lawmakers have declared their answer. By withholding both his signature and his veto, Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon signaled he agreed and recently allowed the legislative answer to become state law.

“The life of each human being begins at conception,” according to Senate Bill 793, which adds new regulations to the state’s 24-hour informed consent law for abortions. “Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.”

The bill makes Missouri the second state to adopt such language after a similar provision became law in South Dakota in 2005 and then survived a legal challenge in federal court in 2008.

Abortion providers will be required to include the language from the bill prominently on brochures that will be required for every woman seeking the procedure—even if they don’t believe the theology the words represent.

“Those are not sentiments that all the world’s religions, or all the people in the state, believe in,” said Paula Gianino, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri.

But supporters of the new law say they see no conflict between religion and the law’s definition of life.

State Sen. Jim Lembke, a Republican and one of the bill’s sponsors, said the language on the new brochures “is not a religious statement. It’s a scientific statement.”

Those with differing beliefs “will have to take all the information given to them and make an informed decision,” Lembke said.

The sentiment expressed in the first of the new brochures’ two sentences—that life begins at conception—has been part of Missouri law nearly a quarter century. Scientists agree that when a sperm and egg unite, a living organism results.

But for philosophers and theologians, things get more complicated with the second sentence about abortion ending the life of a “separate, unique, living human being.”

“The distinction is between human life where you’re talking about an organism as opposed to a human life in a moral sense,” said Bonnie Steinbock, professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany. “Those are two different debates that go back to Aquinas and the issue of ensoulment.”

Aquinas—and Augustine before him—wrestled with concepts first introduced by Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. Aristotle believed a soul could only inhabit a fetus when that fetus began to look human, a timetable he set at 40 days for men and 90 days for women.

The 40-day notion prevailed in the Roman Catholic Church until the 19th century, when Pope Pius IX removed the distinction between souled and unensouled fetuses from church doctrine.

Since then, the Catholic Church has conceded that man can never know empirically when an embryo gains its soul. Pope John Paul II said “the mere probability that a human person is involved would suffice to justify an absolutely clear prohibition of any intervention aimed at killing a human embryo.”

Protestant denominations have a variety of positions on life’s beginnings, although more conservative evangelical churches largely embrace the Vatican’s views.

But other faith traditions disagree and have for centuries.

“The Talmud says that from the moment of fertilization until 40 days, the embryo has a status of being nearly liquid,” said Rabbi Yehiel Poupko, Judaic scholar at the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. “The question for Jewish law is not when does life begin, but when is the embryo entitled to the justice and compassion of society?”

Islamic law closely follows Jewish law, though different streams within Islam have various views, said Abdulaziz Sachedina, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Virginia and author of Islamic Biomedical Ethics.

Most Sunni Muslims “believe that life begins at the turn of the first trimester,” Sachedina said.

Hindus believe in reincarnation, so the concept that life beginning “at conception” creates theological problems. “Life cannot begin at conception when our lives have not ended in the first place,” said Cromwell Crawford, a retired professor at the University of Hawaii and author of Hindu Bioethics for the Twenty-First Century.

Critics, including Kate Lovelady of the Ethical Society of St. Louis, say the new law imposes one narrow religious view on others. “A lot of our members don’t believe life begins at conception—that it’s much more complicated than that.”

As polarizing as the abortion debate is, many pro-life and pro-choice advocates agree in principle on the subject of religious doctrine incorporated into government health warnings.

“We shouldn’t be crafting legislation based on differing faith systems,” said Lembke, the bill’s co-sponsor. “I’d much rather use our Constitution.”

Tim Townsend writes for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in St. Louis, Mo.

United States ties for fifth place in global giving. The United States tied with Switzerland for fifth place in a worldwide giving index by the British-based Charities Aid Foundation that measures charitable behavior across the globe. The ranking was based on the United States’ showing in three categories—60 percent of Americans gave to an organization; 39 percent volunteered for a group; and 65 percent were willing to aid a stranger. Australia and New Zealand were ranked as the most charitable countries, followed by Ireland and Canada. Burundi and Madagascar tied for last place. The report was based on data from Gallup’s World Poll, taken in 153 countries and representing about 95 percent of the global population.

Report finds spike in U.S. poverty levels. The number of people in poverty in America increased to its highest recorded point last year, and the poverty rate rose to its highest level since 1994, new statistics show. The Census Bureau released data that showed a significant annual increase in poverty, rising 1.1 percentage points to 14.3 percent in 2009. A total of 43.6 million live in poverty—the highest since recording began in 1959—and up from 39.8 million in 2008. As result of the ongoing financial crisis, social service programs—including faith-based providers—are faced with the challenge of increased needs from individuals and working families, budget cuts and a decrease in individual donations.

IHOP sues IHOP. The International House of Pancakes has sued the International House of Prayer, a Missouri church, for trademark infringement. The restaurant chain—which uses the website IHOP.com—claims the Kansas City church—whose website is IHOP.org—intentionally is misleading customers. The restaurant chain, which started in 1958, has used the IHOP acronym since 1973. Both the church and the restaurant claim around-the-clock operations. Many of the almost 1,500 restaurants in the United States, Canada and Mexico are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, serving breakfast and a plethora of pancakes. According to the church’s website, it seeks to “combine 24/7 prayers for justice with 24/7 works of justice.” Its “24/7 prayer room” has a schedule of 12 two-hour worship meetings each day. The church declined to discuss the suit beyond a brief statement: “We are aware of the lawsuit. We are reviewing the situation. At this time, we have no comment.”

Calvin College withdraws band’s invitation. Calvin College has canceled a scheduled Oct. 15 concert by the Canadian indie rock band New Pornographers after the band’s name prompted complaints from the local community. Ken Heffner, director of student activities at the Christian Reformed Church-affiliated school, said complaints had poured into the school since the show was announced in August, but wouldn’t say specifically the source of most of them. The band’s name often is interpreted as a reference to preacher Jimmy Swaggart’s insistence that rock music is “the new pornography,” but frontman A.C. Newman has said he took it from a Japanese film called The Pornographers, a dark comedy.

Jon Acuff is the author of the satirical blog Stuff Christians Like and a book by the same title published by Zondervan. In about two years, Acuff has taken a start-up blog from obscurity to more than 1.5 million readers, including many who interact loyally with his site every week.

Brad Russell recently sat down with Acuff to learn more about Stuff Christians Like and the guy behind the stuff.

Tell us about Stuff Christians Like.

Well, it’s really an exploration of the entire culture of faith from a Christian perspective. So, it’s everything from how to raise your hand in church when you worship to silly things we do on the road, like driving like we’re not Christians. I wish there was a bumper sticker that said, “I’m sorry I cut you off, but I’m a Christian that drives like an agnostic.” People have this idea that “I don’t have to have faith when I’m in the car.” We’ll have it when we get to church, but on the way there, we might need to run somebody off the road. My grandmother actually took her ichthus off her car because she didn’t want to make a bad name for God.

One of the things I see in your work is ambivalence about pop culture. You’ll talk a lot about Lil Wayne and Prince, and then you talk about the church being obsessed with being relevant and post-modern. What’s the challenge of the church to navigate that tension, to speak the language of the culture but not worship the culture?

I think it’s a fine line. I think there has been a time when we went from being irrelevant to being obsessed. There’s a pendulum. I think now maybe we are swinging back toward the middle. But somebody asked me, “Do you ever think we’ll be as cool as the world?” And I said, “I hope not.”

We’re not held to that standard. It’s not a popularity contest. It’s not a coolness contest. For me, I use pop-culture references because it’s a common language. When you, in the midst of a big “Jon and Kate” celebrity blow-up, mention them, everyone knows what you’re talking about, so it gives you a chance to use a shared language to jump off of. For me, that’s why I use pop culture. There’s stuff I don’t really care about and think it’s silly, but I know I’ll connect with a larger group of people if I can reflect that but not be obsessed with it, because ultimately, I don’t write a gossip column. I’m not writing TMZ for Christians.

You grew up as the son of a church planter in the Boston area. How did that whole experience shape your humor and observations about the church?

It definitely did. Massachusetts at that time was very focused on Catholicism, so with my dad being a Southern Baptist minister, it was difficult getting a foothold. So, I watched him creatively approach people, creatively approach community, and that shaped how I looked at faith. It wasn’t cookie-cutter. He didn’t have an easy job, so I saw him apply creativity and honesty, and these are things that are important to me now. So, I definitely think it shaped me.

If there were three values that you would say guide your work, what would that constellation of values look like? What’s underneath there?

Well, I guess, honesty is one. Kindness. Mockery just tries to wound. Satire is not mockery. I hate it when people confuse the two. Satire is just humor with a purpose. So, I guess kindness, honesty and maybe accessibility. I don’t want ivory tower ideas, and I don’t want complicated ideas.

For you, where is the line between satire, sarcasm and maybe cynicism?

For me, the difference between satire and mockery is, “Is there a victim?” I ask, “If I write this, does somebody get hurt?” And the other distinction is that satire addresses issues where mockery addresses individuals. If I can stay away from making it personal, all the better. It’s so much better to me to get people to talk about an issue. Who cares about one particular celebrity? If I can talk about divorce, for instance, then people can relate to that and engage with it.

One of the things people praise about your work is that underneath the humor is a profound caring for people that comes through, a great deal of grace and compassion. Do you see the church missing the boat sometimes?

I think we do sometimes. I mean, I write about Christian hate mail. That doesn’t even make sense. We should be the most loving people. We should be the ones who have the most grace, because we have been forgiven the most. So, it’s weird that we’ll give grace to everyone that’s named ourselves, and then won’t give grace to other people, so yeah, I think that’s just weird.

One of my favorite pieces is on “how to break up with your small group.” How do you do that?

Well for me, there have been times when you have a small group, and it just doesn’t fit. It’s just not right. It doesn’t mean they’re jerks or not good Christians. And so for me, I came up with some things to do, like you just make gross desserts so they’ll leave. You just tell horrible stories about bathroom issues you’re having. Or you make a run for the border and just find another group and start going to that group as you start “small grouping around” and get a reputation. Or, you can just be honest. That’s always a possibility.

Any crises in the church that you think we need to urgently address?

I’m always concerned about “deep v-neck syndrome.” We’ve got plunging necklines for our men that are disturbing. And iPads. We have people reading sermon notes from iPads for a sermon about homelessness. That doesn’t make sense.

Tell us a little bit about your process. You appear to have this enormous work ethic with over 750,000 words written in two years. How do you do what you do?

The big part is collecting, capturing the ideas. So many people have ideas, but they don’t ever capture them, and they disappear. I initially capture an idea and write it down on my iPhone. And then sometime later I’ll go back and look at—whether it’s a good idea. Does it fit the site? Does it make sense? Has it been done before?

Then I’ll write a draft, and then wait a week, because you need a week from your work to get objective about it. If I post it that day, I’m too close to it. I won’t see some of the errors in it. So, I wait a week, and then I’ll edit it and post it.

I usually try to stay about three weeks ahead of my site, so I have three weeks written and posted at any given time. That gives me the chance to have a bigger look, so I can say: “Wow, I have two marriage posts in the same week. Let me move that and split it up.” Because if you are a single reader, that’s kind of frustrating.

So what’s next for Jon Acuff?

Figure out the next book. Working on that, spending more time on the site. Being a dad, being a husband, being an employee. We’ll see.

Perfect love, wrote the Apostle John, casts out fear.

For Christians, that simple maxim would seem to be an easy formula for stress-free living. But 2,000 years after those words were written, many disciples of Christ still find their lives dominated by fear—and worse, many Christian leaders believe, their response to it often is indistinguishable from that of the society in which they live.

“What shocks me … is that many Christians have bought into fear as a thoughtful reaction to terrorism, to immigration, to heath care and to many other important issues,” Drew Smith, an ordained Baptist minister who is director of international programs at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Ark., recently blogged.

Bill Shiell, pastor of First Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tenn., observed many Christians “are informed primarily by forwarded e-mails and relentlessly repetitive information, rather than the good news of Christ.”

“The phrase ‘do not be afraid’ is used 365 times in the Bible for a reason,” said Shiell, former pastor of Southland Baptist Church in San Angelo. “The faithful are often the most susceptible to fear.”

On the face of it, fear might appear a rational American—and Christian—response to the unsettling first decade of the 21st century. The worst economic slump since the Great Depression has left thousands without jobs and depleted retirement funds. American invulnerability was shattered by the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Immigration seems resistant to resolution and exacerbates both economic and security worries.

Passionate opposition to the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero is just one of the most visible reactions to such concerns.

“Today’s world is reactive and irrational,” said Bob Dale, a Richmond, Va., church consultant and retired associate executive director of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. “Threats seem more random, sinister and senseless than before. Our fears get amped up by news shouters, stock market jitters, political craziness and self-declared preachers.”

“Two wars, a failing economy, mortgage crisis, unemployment nightmares and the decline of all denominations in the United States have left us wondering: What are we to do?” said Derik Hamby, pastor of Randolph Memorial Baptist Church in Madison Heights, Va. “I’m not surprised when people are so afraid and rally around angry voices and express themselves in less than peaceful ways.”

But that response is at odds with the gospel, said George Mason, pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas.

“Jesus told us we are the light of the world. For too many, that means that we exist to expose all that is evil and wrong so that people will be rightly afraid. But all through the Bible, any time an angel or an apostle shows up with a word from God, it begins with the command, ‘Fear not’ or, ‘Be not afraid.’ If we are to take that seriously, our faith shouldn’t succumb so quickly to fear and certainly shouldn’t inspire it,” Mason said.

“On the contrary, to be the light of the world should be more like living in such a way that those who dwell in the darkness of doubt and fear will see an alternative way forward based on faith that the future is safely in the hands of God.”

A variety of causes provoke fear, some church leaders agree. But the causes circle around a handful of themes.

Contrasting worldviews

Many Christians, equally drawing inspiration from Scripture, evaluate the world and its unpredictability in conflicting ways, Mason noted.

There are “those who begin with creation as good and think of everything unwinding out of control from sin’s entrance into the world,” he said. “And (there are) those who—like me—see creation itself as the first act of God ordering life out of chaos.”

The first group fears chaos is trumping an ordered creation and struggles to hold the rising turmoil at bay, Mason observed. The second group believes God has not yet finished the work of his new creation, and Christians are to live as signs of that ultimate victory.

“The first group tends to use fear as a warning that things will spiral out of control if we don’t exercise faith, which means fighting chaos by ordering the world in a way that reflects the values of the Garden of Eden,” he said.

“The second group sees fear as counterproductive to the good news of the kingdom of God that Jesus preached and called us to. If the latter is so, then we don’t have to fear, because we have nothing to worry about in the end. What did the resurrection prove, if not that the powers of chaos revealed in the cross are defeated once and for all?”

Confronting “the other”

The unknown—and the uncertainty it engenders—is a significant source of fear, said Chuck Warnock, pastor of Chatham (Va.) Baptist Church.

“Fear, whether it is based in fact or fantasy, divides people,” said Warnock. “Many of the fearful political reactions we see today characterize ‘others’ as those not like ‘us’—immigrants, Muslims and even our own president. Fear builds a wall between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ barricading itself behind our own need for security and stability.”

In contrast to the Cold War, today’s enemies are shadowy and hard to define, and consequently more frightening, Dale observed.

“Our poorly defined world pits us against many unknowns—‘thems.’ Those threats without a name leave us jumpy. Our raw nerves cause us to overreact. Anything—or anyone—unfamiliar is suspected and blamed. ‘Alien’ persons or beliefs are fair game for our anger.”

Scripture offers models for living without fear of “the other,” Hamby said.

“I realize there are those who find a message within our history and text that adds to the fear, but we should instead turn to the overwhelming tradition of peace found within those same sources,” he said. “We should not be afraid to encourage our people within and our community without. We need to get to know our faith neighbors and let our churches get to know their neighbors as well. It’s easy to fear those we do not know. It’s time for preachers and rabbis and imams to sit down and talk. It’s time for Sunday school classes to talk about healing and hope and not fear and failure.”

Loss of control

When chaos seems to gain the upper hand, the prospect of losing control over events provokes gut-wrenching fear, said Winn Collier, pastor of All Souls, a Baptist congregation in Charlottesville, Va.

“When we believe that our power, our authority, our place at the center of the table is threatened, then we launch into maintaining—at least our sense of—control,” Collier said.

“When those who have an opposing sexual ethic, political narrative or religious commitment seem to be gaining ground, our fangs come out.”

But God doesn’t ask Christians to retain cultural or political control, Collier said.

“In fact, Jesus, Paul and the early church were all marked by their refusal to play political games,” he said. “If we truly believe that the kingdom of God rules, then we have little angst when any of our human kingdoms begin to crumble. Conversely, if we have angst over crumbling human kingdoms, we might ask ourselves if we truly believe in the kingdom of God.

The real question, Collier insisted, isn’t how to handle fear. It’s how to believe and obey God.

“We live in an anxious world, and the only way I can see to speak against that anxiety is to declare that there is One who reigns over the world.”

Unsettling change

The toppling of the status quo, and especially cultural assumptions, is unnerving and fear-provoking, Warnock said.

“Fear is often based on preserving what is ‘ours’ by depriving someone else of the same rights and privileges,” he said. “In the United States, we see this playing out in the sons and daughters of immigrant ancestors who now are fearful that their lifestyle is threatened by a new generation of immigrants from Africa, Mexico and the Middle East.

“Christians must acknowledge that one of the hallmarks of Old Testament hospitality was welcoming the stranger,” he said. “Jesus answered the question, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ by giving us the story of the Good Samaritan, who was a member of a despised group during the first century. Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well is another example of bridging the cultural and social divide, which many in Jesus’ day were afraid threatened their own lives.”

“We have nothing to protect,” Collier said. “The gospel is our only allegiance—and it doesn’t need our protection. And our dishonest or anger-laced response to others actually makes the gospel within us impotent.

“If we believe Jesus is King, then no other king, no other religion, no other political or historical reality, has any power of us,” he added. “We truly have nothing to fear. If we are living in fear, it means we do not truly believe God.”

Fears won’t be easily assuaged, Christian leaders agree, but attempts to quell them are critical.

“The only distinction the Bible makes in fear is ‘fear-of-the-Lord’—awe and respect of God that shapes our lives—and unhealthy fear,” Shiell said. “And the only antidote to unhealthy fear is love because ‘perfect love casts out fear.’”