Philanthropy Expert: Conservatives Are More Generous

Beliefnet.com
By Frank Brieaddy
Religion News Service

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks is about to become the darling of the religious right in America -- and it's making him nervous.

The child of academics, raised in a liberal household and educated in the liberal arts, Brooks has written a book that concludes religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, irrespective of income.

In the book, he cites extensive data analysis to demonstrate that values advocated by conservatives -- from church attendance and two-parent families to the Protestant work ethic and a distaste for government-funded social services -- make conservatives more generous than liberals.

The book, titled "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism" (Basic Books, $26), is due for release Nov. 24.

When it comes to helping the needy, Brooks writes: "For too long, liberals have been claiming they are the most virtuous members of American society. Although they usually give less to charity, they have nevertheless lambasted conservatives for their callousness in the face of social injustice."

Find out you favourite comic book super hero's religious affiliation

Find out here and see the actual evidence!

I just realized I like to equivocate on most important matters

equivocate \ih-KWIV-uh-kayt\, intransitive verb:
To be deliberately ambiguous or unclear in order to mislead or to avoid committing oneself to anything definite.
(dictionary.reference.com)

I guess I have a fear of commitment?

Maybe I’m am plagued by an overwhelming desire to accept the human condition only in shades of grey. Like the band Garbage sang, “I’m only happy when it’s complicated.”

Sermons by Tozer

I just found audio sermons by A.W.Tozer available online!
Here: http://www.nycradio.com/ministries/a_w_tozer/

Here is an article I helped write about Tozer a while back:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tozer

How To Score in Church

This article from Maxim Magazine advises that chuch is a great place to meet the opposite sex. Its advice on how to go about meeting a church-goer are humorous and while it probably serves to mock the church it actually reflects the thinking of a lot of young Christians.

I noticed a trend many years ago after being heavily involved in a Christian singles/college group where after people matched up and got married they stopped attending church all together. This trend only reinforced my suspicion that for many people church is only a place to meet the opposite sex. I've actually been bothered by this for a long time. Well at least it beats meeting people in bars because you get a better crowd ... even though the people in bars might be less hypocritical since its obvious why they are there unlike the pseudo-holy that hang out the co-ed prayer meetings hoping to score a date.

Protestants’ surge in Latin America worries cardinal

Brazilian Cardinal Hummes

VATICAN CITY (AP, Oct. 9, 2005) — A Brazilian cardinal on Saturday lamented the rapid growth of Protestant movements in Latin America and wondered aloud how much longer the region could be called Catholic.

Cardinal Claudio Hummes’ comments to the Synod of Bishops reflected increasing concern in the Roman Catholic Church about the competition for souls in Latin America and Africa.

Hummes cited Brazilian government and church data that found that Brazil’s Catholics, who represented about 90 percent of the country’s population in the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, had fallen to 83 percent in 1991 and 67 percent today (dramatic change if true!)

At the same time, for every Catholic priest in Brazil, there are now two Protestant ministers, he said, according to a summary of his remarks released by the Vatican.

Pope Benedict XVI has spoken out on a few occasions about the threats to the Catholic faith posed by Protestant groups.

In a homily on April 18, the first day of the conclave that elected him pope, he denounced the “dictatorship of relativism” in the world and cited the Protestant groups, as well as Marxism, liberalism, atheism and agnosticism, as threats to the fundamental truths of the church.

(The Pope has this backwards. The Protestant groups that are experiencing growth in South America and Africa hold to “to the fundamental truths of the church” if one defines "funndamental truths" as the teachings of Christ.)

More recently, in a speech to priests in northern Italy, the pope lamented that Protestants were attracting Africans looking for religion beyond their traditional faiths.

(If they want "religion" then they would not be interested in this kind of Protestantism. It is their rejection of religion that leads them to a real relationship with Christ as encouraged by these Protestant groups.

And what reason does he have to describe Protestantism as a proponent of relativism? The Cardinal obviously understands little about Protestantism, especially the growing Protestant groups in South America and Africa that he is referring to who are largely Pentecostal/Evangelical churches that are even more Biblically conservative than the Roman Catholic Church, since these flourishing groups hold to the supremacy of scripture and not to the changing opinions of Vatican teaching or ecclesiastical authority.)

Tourism Authority of Thailand calls in ancient goddess to clear away ghosts from its beaches after tsunami

Statue of Mazu, Meizhou Bay in Putian, Fujian Province

BANGKOK (Reuters, Aug 19/05) - Mazu, a Taoist goddess of the sea [and protector of sailors and immigrants], has a huge following among fishermen and shipworkers in coastal provinces of southern China and Taiwan.

With Asian tourists still shunning its southern beaches [because they feel it is inauspicious to visit a place of mass death], Thailand is calling in … revered Chinese sea goddess to ward off the restive spirits of the thousands who died in last December's tsunami.

A statue of Godmother Ruby, known as Mazu in Chinese, will be brought to the Thai island of Phuket … [from China] … for ghost-clearing rites, said Suwalai Pinpradab of the Tourism Authority of Thailand.