Chuck Colson and Timothy George have this open letter in the current issue of Christianity Today:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

As you probably know by now, Obama Administration has refused to grant religious organizations an exemption from purchasing health insurance that covers abortion-inducing drugs, surgical sterilization, and contraception.

The Catholic bishops in America have responded quickly, decrying the Administration’s decision for what it is—an egregious, dangerous violation of religious liberty—and mobilizing a vast grassroots movement to persuade the Administration to reverse its decision.

We evangelicals must stand unequivocally with our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters. Because when the government violates the religious liberty of one group, it threatens the religious liberty of all.

Many bishops have already declared that they will not obey this unjust law. The penalty for such a move would be severe. Catholic hospitals, universities, and other organizations would be forced to pay punitive fines ($2,000 per employee) for refusing to purchase insurance that violates the teaching of their church.

For some institutions, it would spell the end of their existence—and their far-reaching service to the public and the needy.

But Catholic institutions aren’t the only ones affected by this mandate. Prison Fellowship, for example, which employs 180 people, could not purchase insurance for its employees that covers abortifacients. Nor could the world’s largest Christian outreach to prisoners and their families afford the fines we would incur.

Three years ago, when we co-authored the Manhattan Declaration, we predicted that the time would come when Christians would have to face the very real prospect of civil disobedience—that we would have to choose sides: God or Caesar.

Certainly for the Catholics and for many of us evangelicals, that time is already upon us.

We do not exaggerate when we say that this is the greatest threat to religious freedom in our lifetime.

Read the rest.

The halls of the Washington Hilton, the hotel that hosted the National Prayer Breakfast, buzzed last Thursday as people discussed the speech — Metaxas’ speech, not President Obama’s, which followed. Outside the hotel, a Occupy Wall Street protestor asked, “Is it true what I’m hearing, that Eric Metaxas talked about Jesus?”

It was true. And then, to end his speech, Metaxas led those in attendance in the singing of the hymn, “Amazing Grace.” The author attacked “phony religiosity,” which he struggled through as an agnostic studying at Yale before he became a Christian.

“Jesus was and is the enemy of dead religion,” Metaxas said. “He came to deliver us from that.” Prayer emanates from “real faith in God,” he said, adding that faith in Jesus leads to courageous acts like those of Bonhoeffer and Wilberforce.

The video below is set to start at approximately the 35 minute mark which is where Metaxas’ speech begins.

More Women Priests
From the Telegraph: The watershed moment comes less than 20 years since the Church first allowed women to be priests, in the face of opposition from Anglo-Catholics and conservative evangelicals who believe that only men can be church leaders.

The Kingdom of the Cross Under the Sword of the Crescent
From Michael Horton: Newsweek‘s current cover-story is “The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World,” by Ayann Hirsi Ali, who fled her native Somalia and served in the Dutch Parliament before taking a position at the American Enterprise Institute. As the article points out, widespread anti-Christian violence is exploding even in countries with Muslim minorities. How do we respond wisely as Christians to this growing threat?

10 Reasons to Believe in an Historical Adam
From Kevin DeYoung: In recent years, several self-proclaimed evangelicals, or those associated with evangelical institutions, have called into question the historicity of Adam and Eve. It is said that because of genomic research we can no longer believe in a first man called Adam from whom the entire human race has descended.

Carson and Keller on Jakes and the Elephant Room
The purpose of this post is not to provide a re-hash of recent events, still less to assign blame. It is to provide some theological and pastoral reflection on the interlocking issues with which we have been wrestling.

The President, the Pill, and Religious Liberty in Peril
From Albert Mohler:  In 1808, President Thomas Jefferson stated the matter bluntly: “I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.”  Fast forward 204 years and President Barack Obama has reversed that logic, ordering religious institutions to provide insurance coverage for employees that must include contraceptives, including those that may induce an abortion.

Pastoral Contentment and the Plague
In the beginning of May, 1665 London had a divine appointment with what the Puritan Thomas Vincent described as “one of the most terrible plagues that was ever visited on this or perhaps any other kingdom.” We now know it as the bubonic plague.

One of my friends (who falls left of center, politically) sent this along to me.  It’s a witty ditty, but I can’t quite tell which side Phil Ochs is singing for:

Ran across this article to which I replied, AMEN!  It has cross application to both child-rearing as well as to parish life and leadership:

A while back, I had a student with a serious attitude problem. Let’s call her “Sue.” On the first day of an art course in which I first encountered Sue, my antennae shot up. At the end of my opening presentation, when I asked for questions, Sue responded by launching a missile. Due to her internship obligations, she would be late for several classes. I reiterated my policy on lateness (it’s strict) and suggested it might be best for her to drop my course. To this Sue responded that she needed to take my course to graduate (translation: “Your course is the course that suits my schedule”).

See how it turned out.

Pondering Psalm 139
”Before I let you see your baby, I have to tell you that there’s something wrong with her”. I cannot even begin to imagine the sorrow of hearing such words. You see, I have four children of my own now; and, truly, the only thing I wished for them was health. I just wanted my babies to be healthy. They could be bald, look like an alien, have a cone head that never went away, but please Lord let them be healthy. Just imagine what it must have been like to have no idea that there was anything amiss, sitting in a hospital bed with open, waiting, empty arms…..”there’s something wrong with her”. How do you even begin to filter through the rush of emotions that accompany such a phrase? From utter joy to utter despair with a few spoken words.

The Elephant in the Room
From Voddie Baucham: This past week a firestorm erupted over the recent “Elephant Room 2.”  The controversy centers around the decision to invite Bishop T.D. Jakes to participate in the event.

The Distinguishing Marks of a True Work of the Spirit of God
Jonathan Edwards sought to promote vibrant Christian faith through teaching people what the “marks,” or signs, of godly living actually are. He did so not merely because he was really smart and liked categorizing things, but because he wanted Christians to experience the joy of true Christianity and then spread that joy to others. In short, he was a missional pastor before the vodcasts and fauxhawks.

You Don’t Generate Sympathy by Being Negative
They didn’t have time to listen to me whine.  That was a great lesson to learn in my early twenties. Work hard. Give it your best. Do great work.

The Power of Why
Over the years, I’ve learned from my kids that one of the most powerful words is, “Why.”

Spurgeon on Counting Numbers
I found these thoughts from Charles Spurgeon’s book on preaching evangelistically, The Soul Winner, to be particularly helpful and remarkably relevant to contemporary discussions. Spurgeon had the rare combination of being one of the most evangelistically successful, as well as doctrinally rich, preachers of his day. How we need more who can do both!

Our family shut down all of our Google related services with the announcement of their new privacy (non-privacy) polices.  Looks like Bing will be our search engine and Hotmail migrated all of our gmail accounts and calendars across, seemingly, seamlessly.  I will remain at swood [at] wearestandrews [dot] com.

The Washington Post had this article on the new policy:

Google’s announcement that it is sharing more user data across its services has already raised the hackles of privacy advocates, technology writers and caught the attention of at least one national data-protection agency.

On Tuesday, the search giant announced that it was placing 60 of its Web services under a unified privacy policy that would allow the company to share data between any of those services. (Google Books, Google Wallet and Google Chrome are excluded due to different regulatory and technical issues.) Any user with a Google account — used to sign in to services such as Gmail, YouTube and personalized search — must agree to the policy. Users who don’t want to have their data shared have the option to close their accounts with Google.

What kind of information are they collecting and integrating?:

Google collects and can integrate almost anything that’s already in the Google ecosystem: calendar appointments, location data, search preferences, contacts, personal habits based on Gmail chatter, device information and search queries, to name a few.

A little later in the article it says by collecting such information Google will be able to send you a reminder, based on having identified your location, as to whether you might be running late for an upcoming meeting – or, it will auto correct the mis-spelling of a name in a document based on its spelling in your contact file.

Creepily invasive.

Read the rest.

Meet the Marriage Killer
From the WSJ: Ken Mac Dougall bit into the sandwich his wife had packed him for lunch and noticed something odd—a Post-it note tucked between the ham and the cheese. He pulled it out of his mouth, smoothed the crinkles and read what his wife had written: “Be in aisle 10 of Home Depot tonight at 6 p.m.”

When Good isn’t Good Enough
Our unbelieving neighbors regard themselves as more tolerant. They suppose themselves to be morally superior to judgmental Christians with our exacting, unrealistic standards of holiness. But the reality of the situation reveals itself in a case like Paterno. No good is good enough to wipe away his sins from the record of history as judged by his peers. He could never recover. The first paragraph of his obituary tells the story.

Adele as Allegory
From James Smith: Because of her commercial success, some indie music snobs might miss the fact that Adele is one of the great female crooners of a generation. We bought my daughter a copy of her live performance at Royal Albert Hall for Christmas, but I think it’s been in the CD player in my car since December 25. It is a masterful, captivating performance (despite the fact that she was suffering from a throat condition and would undergo surgery shortly after).

The Iron Lady: A Truly Meaningful Film
From Carl Trueman: Watching The Iron Lady was a strangely emotional experience.   As for anyone who came of age in eighties Britain, the formative years of my life were dominated by the presence of Mrs Thatcher.  The riots of 81, the Maze hunger strikes, the IRA bombings, the Falklands, the miners’ strike, the poll tax: these were the events which shaped public life; and they shaped how I thought of England, of Britain and of the rest of the world.  I joined her party in 1982, voted for her in 1987 and was saddened but not surprised when she fell from power in 1990.   It is a tired and hackneyed phrase, but, for good or ill, we shall not probably not see her like again.

Work on Your Character and a Good Life will Come to You
The blogosphere is abuzz with advice for the new year. We’re being given tricks and tips on getting ahead, becoming more efficient and so forth. But as a guy who helps people live better stories, I have to tell you the best advice I’ve ever heard is simple: Work on your character and a good life will come to you.

A very interesting account of a conversation between Steve Jobs and President Obama in which Jobs tells Obama that manufacturing jobs are not returning and why this must be so.

Here’s a clip: