...A Christian activist claims Washington, DC, has declared war on the Ten Commandments. Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council recently placed a three-foot-square stone tablet of the Commandments in his ministry's garden, which is located directly across the street from the U.S. Supreme Court building. Schenck says officials with the nation's capital did not waste time taking action. "We were served notice that the Ten Commandments had to be removed, or we would be fined $300 a day," he explains. "And if we failed to pay the fine, our property could be seized and forced to sell to settle the fine. So the city launched a war against the Ten Commandments, and we are presently organizing our legal response to that." The ministry leader says the display will remain where it is, on private property. "The Commandments remain in our front garden," he says. "We have announced to the city that we have no intention to remove the Ten Commandments; that if they wish for them to be removed, they will have to come and remove them themselves." While Schenck investigates his legal options, the city is demanding a permit for the display -- something the activist says has never been demanded of anyone else who has a display of any kind in their garden. [Bill Fancher]
...A Christian author says that Christians have no right to make use of psychic powers. Dave Hunt, who co-leads The Berean Call ministry, says believers should have nothing to do with psychics or their powers. While acknowledging that many psychics are fake and use tricks to deceive clients, Hunt believes some psychics are used by demons to make destructive predictions. He believes assassin Sirhan Sirhan, for example, had demonic psychic powers and predicted the day that Robert F. Kennedy died. "You have to really be a master at this and have given yourself over to come up with any degree of accuracy," he says. "Nevertheless, Satan can make predictions of a destructive nature." And Satan can predict some evil things and "have his people that he is controlling bring them to pass," explains Hunt, "but he can't predict any good things." Hunt has written numerous books on New Age and Hindu practices. His latest book is Yoga and the Body of Christ. (See related article) [Natalie Harris]
...An activist working to bring democracy to China says he has been studying the voting records and policy statements of the leading Republican candidates for president -- and only three, he says, seem to recognize the threat posed by Communist China and would like confront it. D.J. McGuire is president of the China Support Network and the China E-Lobby. He believes the next U.S. president will have to deal with a communist invasion of Taiwan, which he is convinced will occur before 2012. With strong feelings about that prospect, McGuire says he is comfortable with only three current GOP presidential contenders: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Senator George Allen, and Congressman Tom Tancredo. "The best of those three, far and away, is the last one, Tom Tancredo," McGuire shares. "He has a very clear record of being not only an anti-Communist vote in Congress, but an anti-Communist leader in Congress." And McGuire believes the illegal immigration issue will make a Tancredo candidacy much more likely. "It appears that someone who at least has Tancredo's views on illegal immigration will probably have to be the nominee in 2008," he says. "The Republican primary voters will not accept anyone anymore who does not have that sort of view on the border." The China watchdog says he is not thrilled with Senators John McCain, Chuck Hagel, or Bill Frist when it comes to the issue of Communist China. [Bill Fancher]
...A conservative media watchdog has completed a study of the mainstream media's coverage of the war on terror -- and reveals finding an intense anti-military bias in recent weeks. Rich Noyes is director of research at the Media Research Center. His study found that in just three weeks, the networks devoted three-and-a-half hours to one-sided coverage of the misconduct allegations surrounding U.S. Marines in the Iraqi village of Haditha. He reports the news clips showed "people like John Murtha saying that he was already convinced that these guys were cold-blooded killers." But the Marines never had a chance to respond, says Noyes, until one of them began using his attorney to speak. "Their defense is that, while they don't dispute that innocent civilians were killed, their actions were all legitimate based on the situation they had at the time," the MRC spokesman points out. In contrast, Noyes says the networks have dedicated a mere 52 minutes of reporting on acts of military heroism since September 2001. "Giving almost no coverage to the top 20 heroes of the war on terror shows you that there's really a mindset in the media that they want to promote these stories of military misdeeds and accusations of wrongdoing," he says, "and they don't have much airtime set aside to tout the exceptional heroism of some of our troops." While Noyes says there is no question that the media must not hide bad news from the public, he adds they should balance the coverage with true stories of America's heroes. [Chad Groening]
...South Carolina has become the second state to allow students to get academic credit for Bible study. The South Carolina Released Time Credit Act was signed into law this month by Governor Mark Sanford. Georgia is the other state that offers students academic credit for religion classes. About 6,500 South Carolina students each year leave campus during the day to participate in religion classes. Supporters of the law hope the credit will boost interest among high school students. [AP]
Special Report
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
COLUMBUS, OH: (6/19/2006)--The election of Nevada Bishop Katharine Schori to the post of Presiding Bishop was engineered by Los Angeles Bishop J. Jon Bruno, when Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold reneged on "significant funding" he promised Bruno in his lawsuit against St. James, Newport Beach to retake the parish.
St. James and four other parishes had fled The Episcopal Church over the national church's rejection of the authority of Scripture and the moral decline of the church reflected in the consecration of New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson.
VirtueOnline was told that Schori was brokered in by a cabal of West Coast bishops, liberal bishops who hated Griswold, and a number of conservative bishops who wanted to make it clear to the Anglican Communion that the Episcopal Church was hell bent and would never repent or do a U-turn away from its revisionist agenda. They wanted to make it crystal clear where the church was heading, and a vote for Schori would do it.
As the story goes, Bruno was promised funding that never came through and this angered the West coast bishop. He got a stick in the eye from 815 (the church's national headquarters) and he was not about to forgive Griswold.
Secondly, a conclave of some 20 conservative and liberal bishops called by Bruno earlier this year to try and resolve how to deal with conservative parishes that wanted to flee revisionist bishops and come under conservative bishops, nothing came of it. Why? Frank Griswold disavowed it.
Bruno saw this as a double cross. After the conclave Bruno thought he had a deal but found he had no deal at all.
The deal they cut at the time was that liberal bishops would get all the liberal congregations and the conservative bishops get all the conservative congregations and they would split the rest. It never happened, Griswold called off the deal.
Infuriated, Bruno said he would line up the votes for Schori in her bid for Presiding Bishop.
Then another factor entered into the discussion - the sale of 815 2nd Ave. in New York. (This had been raised before when it was thought that to save millions, the building, on prime Manhattan real estate could be sold rather than fixed up, the church would move onto the grounds of General Theological Seminary. But Griswold nixed it for what he called "missional" purposes.)
When she became a candidate for the top slot Schori, in March, said she was going to move the headquarters from New York to St. Louis. Schori told Bruno she would do that. Bruno did not object largely because to reach 815 by phone from the West coast, (they never answered their phones after 3.45pm) one had to phone from the West coast only in the morning. Other West coast bishops also complained about this.
Bruno also wanted to see 815 sold as well as did a lot of other bishops who were in favor of it. Why? because they wanted to break up the old boy network around New York and move it some place in the Midwest like Cincinnati or St. Louis.
Bruno was able to line up the votes ahead of the convention to swing it her way. Bruno did the whole thing. He also wanted to get rid of the good old southern boy network as well because they were featuring so prominently in the list of Presiding Bishop candidates.
The truth is Bruno is a poor imitation of the Holy Spirit guiding the church in choosing a new presiding bishop -unless the Holy Spirit has decided that the time has come to bring this disgrace to an end. As Jeffrey Steenson the Bishop of the Rio Grande used to say: "The Episcopal Church, I wouldn't have missed it for the world".
Some very liberal bishops also voted for Schori to stick it in the eye of the Anglican Communion.
