AP's Richard Ostling: "Right now...three highly techni-cal disputes have erupted over materials linked to Scrip-ture: - In the most important development, scholars... say tests on remains from a dig in Jordan indicate the biblical country of Edom existed during the era of kings David and Solomon, if not earlier. The find could under-cut skeptics of biblical history. - Prosecutors in Israel filed fraud charges Dec. 29 involving a purported first-century inscription of Jesus Christ's name. But a prom-inent archeology magazine plans to assail the govern-ment's scientific evidence. - New testing indicates the Shroud of Turin, a celebrated relic said to be Christ's burial cloth, could actually date from his time. That op-poses scientists' earlier conclusion that the artifact is a fraud from the medieval era."

AP via CBS News: "'I don't believe I owe an apology,' Ward Churchill said Friday on CNN's 'Paula Zahn Now' program. He defended the essay which compared those killed in the Sept. 11 attack to 'little Eichmanns,' a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who organized Nazi plans to exterminate European Jews. He said the victims were akin to U.S. military operations' collateral damage—or innocent civilians mistakenly killed by soldiers....The furor over Churchill's essay erupted... after he was invited to speak at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. Campus officials discovered that an essay and follow-up book by Churchill characterized the Sept. 11 attacks as a response to a long history of U.S. abuses abroad... Churchill who...remains a tenured professor, said he would sue if he were dismissed."

Powerline: "I read [Bill] Moyers' piece after several readers pointed out how over-the-top it was. I knew Moyers' claims about Watt couldn't possibly be true, for two reasons. First, the concept of stewardship is so fundamental to Christian theology that the claim is laughable on its face. Second, I remember the Reagan administration. James Watt was a controversial figure; but one thing he was not controversial for was advoca-ting environmental pillaging, on the theory that Jesus would be back any day now. That would have been quite a news story in the early 1980s, had it been true. ...I put the matter aside, not having time to pursue it further. Friday morning, I was sitting in my office when my telephone rang. On the phone was a soft-spoken man who said...'My name is James Watt.'"

Ann Oldenburg: "Now, an episode of Postcards From Buster, which combines animation with live action to highlight multiculturalism, includes a real girl introduc-ing her lesbian parents to the bunny. That episode has struck a nerve in a nation already split over the question of same-sex marriage. Buster is produced by WBGH in Boston, where same-sex marriages are legal; the ser-ies is aimed at ages 6 to 8. It's not so much a toler-ance question as it is a question of age-appropriate-ness, says Stephen Bennett, executive director of Stephen Bennett Ministries and special issues editor on homosexuality for the American Family Association. 'When you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, it's about teaching kids about some kind of sexuality,' he says."

In Christianity Today: "When, in Tom Wolfe's most recent novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, Charlotte's mother asks her during Christmas break where students go on dates at Dupont University, Charlotte responds: 'Nobody goes out on a date. The girls go out in groups and the boys go out in groups, and they hope they find somebody they like.' This is Charlotte Simmons's description of 'hooking up.' 'Hooking up' has replaced traditional courtship and dating among today's college students. 'Hooking up' is dating sans courtship or expectations of a future relationship or commitment. It is strictly about user sex. I use you and you use me for mutual pleasure. And liquor is more often than not the lubricant that makes things go."

AP's Richard Ostling: "The postelection phone survey of 2,730 people, conducted by the University of Akron and sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, is a close study of voting behavior and religious faith. Among non-Hispanic Catholics, Kerry won the support of 69 percent with those with liberal or 'modernist' beliefs, while 72 percent of 'traditionalists' favored Bush. But im-portantly, 55 percent of the key swing group of 'centrists' picked Bush over Kerry, who was criticized by bishops for his support of abortion rights. The upshot: A one-time Democratic mainstay, Catholics gave Bush an overall edge of 53 percent to Kerry's 47 percent. Overall, the mainline Protestant vote split evenly, the poll found, with a Bush decline of 10 percent from 2000 and the best showing for a Democrat since the 1960s...."  

Town Hall: "Judeo-Christian religions hold that human beings are created in the image of God. If we are not, we are created in the image of carbon dioxide. Which has a higher value is not difficult to determine....[I]f man was not created by God, the human being is mere stellar dust -- and will come to be regarded as such. Moreover, people are merely the products of random chance, no more designed than a sand grain formed by water erosion. That is what the creationism-evolution battle is ultimately about—human worth. One does not have to agree with creationists or deny all evolutionary evidence to understand that the way evolution is taught, man is rendered a pointless product of random forces—un-worthy of being saved before one's hamster."

John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge: "Ever since 1945, European elites have preferred their politics to be technocratic—mainly managing capitalism for the com-mon good, rather than tackling private issues of faith and morality. This is partly because Europeans are less passionate about religion. Only one in 10 French people says religion plays an important role in his or her life. But lately, cultural issues have begun to force their way back into the mainstream of European politics, stoked by three things. The first is the willingness of politicians to ride roughshod over ancient traditions—and the grow-ing willingness of what Edmund Burke called the 'little platoons' to fight back. The Labor government's bill banning fox hunting in England and Wales...has created a furor in rural England—and not just among toffs."  

The Southern: "'One of the agents opened a file and told me that the FBI wanted to question me about a sermon I preached on Memorial Day nearly six months before,' [the Rev. Randy] Steele said. 'At first I just laughed and said, "you're kidding, right?" and then I could tell by the look on their faces that they weren't. 'They were in no way abrasive, but the things they started asking me about were specific quotes that I had made during that sermon. I was certainly taken aback by the fact that they had exact quotes and I would say that whoever contacted the FBI had to be at the ser-vice.' Steele said he quickly recalled the sermon was about abortion and was one of a series of eight sermons on controversial cultural issues, such as sep-aration of church and state, homosexuality, gambling, etc."

Sun-Times - The big local publishing houses (Tyndale), institutions (Wheaton): "'Because of the publications, the educational institutions, I think the case can be made that there's a different kind of, longer-term, cultur-al-rather-than-political influence [here]'...'This is one of the hotbeds of evangelical Christian publishing," Lynn Garrett, religion editor for Publisher's Weekly, said of the Chicago area, which is home to Tyndale House, Intervarsity Press and several other evangelical Christian publishing houses. 'The most culturally influential one at the moment, and for the last several years, is Tyndale House because of 'Left Behind.' That has been a phenomenal success story.'" Second story: Chicago- area Evangelical political power 

AFP/Australian Broadcasting: "Gibson noted that many people had avoided the film because of its grisly portrayal of Jesus Christ being tortured by Roman troops. 'There has been quite a demand by the religious community to bring [the film] back for Easter,' Bruce Davey, Gibson's partner at Icon Productions, told Variety. 'And there has been a lot of discussion about the violence. Mel wanted to try and accommodate those people by making a version that is softer and gentler. The film, The Passion Recut, will be beamed onto 500 to 750 screens by distributor Newmarket Films, Variety said, adding that the new versions would not be lumbered with an audience age restriction. The new less violent version of the film goes easier on the brutal details of the last days of Christ."

David Limbaugh in Human Events: "The Democratic leadership should understand that it won't endear itself to many Christian voters by rewriting scripture, embra-cing relativism, facilitating a culture of death, endorsing homosexuality as a civil right, portraying government-coerced redistributions of other people's money as acts of compassion toward the poor and preaching class warfare notwithstanding the Commandment against 'coveting.' Far be it from me to assert, on behalf of pol-itical conservatives, a monopoly on Christianity. But I would humbly suggest that if Democrats want to avoid digging themselves into a deeper values quagmire, they would be well advised to pursue a different approach, one that doesn't involve recasting Christian values and rewriting scripture."

Julia Tier on beliefnet: "Considering the fact that Catholicism has been an overwhelmingly positive part of my life, it’s unfortunate that something as important as sexuality should be the one area of my life with no Catholic influence. It seems that, like me, the people I recognize at church on Sunday found a way to have a positive relationship with an institution that views our lifestyle as sinful. Some might consider us 'cafeteria Catholics' who simply pick and choose the teachings they are comfortable with. I disagree. Those of us in the pews for the Sunday night campus liturgy struggle to reconcile our faith with the reality we encounter everyday. We consider ourselves Catholics, but I sometimes wonder if the institutional church would agree."

NRO: "God on the Quad appears to be a prim study of religious institutions of higher learning. In fact, it's a fas-cinating account of how the problem of sex gets resol-ved at colleges where 'anything goes' doesn't go. Take the contrast between a small conservative Catholic col-lege, like Thomas Aquinas, and that Mormon giant, Brigham Young University. At Thomas Aquinas, public displays of affection are strictly forbidden. Yet ubiquit-ous pairs of Brigham Young lovers stroke and caress, even during Sunday religious lectures. Radical as this difference may seem, each school is channeling its students' desire for sex into the quest for marriage. ... Riley shows the sexual pressures experienced by stu-dents at secular schools are transformed at religious colleges into the pressure to find a spouse."

Peter Steinfels: "Mark Noll, an outstanding historian of American religion, has done something further. In Ame-rica's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lin-coln (Oxford University Press, 2002) he compares Lincoln with the acknowledged theological minds of that era. 'None of America's respected religious leaders,' Professor Noll wrote, 'mustered the theological power so economically expressed in Lincoln's Second Inaugural. None probed so profoundly the ways of God or the response of humans to the divine constitution of the world. None penetrated as deeply into the nature of providence. And none described the fate of humanity before God with the humility or the sagacity of the president.'"

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