This was in today’s Northern Virginia Daily. This is a sad day in the Commonwealth of Virginia…

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Chaplains resign from duties in protest of order

Public prayers to Jesus prohibited

By Garren Shipley — Daily Staff Writer

Six of 17 Virginia State Police chaplains have resigned their clerical duties in protest of a directive effectively forbidding them from invoking the name of Jesus during prayers at public events.

The half-dozen troopers, who perform their chaplain’s duties in addition to being sworn law enforcement officers, resigned following an order from Superintendent Col. Steven Flaherty requiring chaplains to offer only nonsectarian prayers at public events.

Flaherty cited a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit earlier this year, in which the court upheld restrictions on sectarian prayer the Fredericksburg City Council placed on its own members for invocations.

“The Colonel respects those chaplains whose convictions and beliefs are in conflict with his request, and is affording those Department chaplains the opportunity to decline participation at Department-sanctioned, public events,” Flaherty wrote.

But the rule doesn’t cover chaplains during private ceremonies or meetings, such as funerals or counseling sessions with colleagues or families, he added.

House Majority Leader Del. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, laid the resignation at the desk of Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine.

“With one misguided action, the Kaine administration has put the chaplains in an impossible position,” Griffith wrote in an e-mail to reporters.

“To then require those troopers to disregard their own faith while serving violates their First Amendment rights and prevents them from serving effectively as chaplains,” Griffith wrote. “These men had little choice but to resign.”

“To adopt that policy is a disappointing break with tradition,” said Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg, who had been in communication with both groups in recent weeks over the issue.

While Obenshain said he hadn’t seen the specific order banning sectarian prayer, the Fredericksburg case would apparently have little impact on chaplains’ prayers.

“It was clear to me that absent a state police policy that there was no First Amendment prohibition against state police chaplains engaging in that,” said Obenshain, whose district includes Shenandoah and Warren counties.

The decision to move to nonsectarian prayers was made by Flaherty alone, according to Kaine spokesman Gordon Hickey, but “Gov. Kaine does support it.”

“Gov. Kaine is a man of faith and has dedicated his life to that service. It’s disappointing that Del. Griffith would make such a a political attack on Gov. Kaine’s faith,” Hickey said.

Del. Bill Carrico, R-Independence, a former state trooper, said the policy amounted to no less than “an attack on Christianity.”

“It aggravates me when public servants act unilaterally out of a supposed fear of getting a complaint, instead of actually having to deal with one,” Carrico said.

* Contact Garren Shipley at gshipley@nvdaily.com61

Tags: Prayer, Virginia

This was sent to me by a fellow pastor…

Top 10 Predictions
No Matter Who Wins the Election

1. The Bible will still have all the answers.

2. Prayer will still work.

3. The Holy Spirit will still move.

4. God will still inhabit the praises of His people.

5. There will still be God-anointed preaching.

6. There will still be singing of praise to God.

7. God will still pour out blessings upon His people.

8. There will still be room at the Cross.

9. Jesus will still love you.

10. Jesus will still save the lost.

ISN’T  IT GREAT TO  KNOW
WHO  IS  STILL  IN   CONTROL?

(Amen!)

I received this in my email inbox today. This is from the blog of Albert Mohler, the president of “The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.” If you think the media and this culture are friendly to our beliefs, you might be surprised.

Alert the Media — A Pastor Believes in Hell

Hell just emerged as an issue in Election 2008, and the campaign now enters a zone where politics and theology collide.

The catalyst for this emergence of eternal punishment as an issue is a “Belief Watch” column in this week’s edition of Newsweek magazine.  In “A Religious-Right Revival,” Lisa Miller suggests that the nomination of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the Republican nominee for Vice President represents a resurgence of the so-called “Religious Right.”

There is something to this argument, of course, given Gov. Palin’s record and positions on key controversial issues.  Her pro-life credentials, even taken alone, would be enough to encourage many evangelical Christians, as the response to her nomination now demonstrates.

But what makes Lisa Miller’s article most interesting has nothing directly to do with abortion, marriage, or any social issue.  The most interesting (and revealing) part of her article is a sentence that does not refer to her campaign, nor to her role as Governor, but to her church:

The senior pastor of that church, in sermons that circulated online before they were taken down last week, preaches hell for anyone who isn’t saved by Jesus.

In the event a reader might miss that sentence, the magazine put the words, “The senior pastor of Palin’s church preaches hellfire for anyone who isn’t saved by Jesus” in large type in both print and electronic editions.  In other words, these words are intended to catch a reader’s eye as newsworthy — an attention grabber.

Miller went on to explain that the fact that her pastor preaches such a message “puts her squarely in the tradition of the old-school religious right.”

Of course, belief in hell as the just punishment of the impenitent is part and parcel of historic biblical Christianity.  Taken at face value, the belief that “anyone who isn’t saved by Jesus” faces the verdict of hell is as normative as any other Christian belief.

There is no way to read the New Testament without encountering the very clear message about the reality of hell.  “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,” Jesus warned.  “Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” [Matthew 10:28].

True, there are those who have denied both the reality of hell and the exclusivity of the Gospel.  Some attempt to deny that those who do not believe in Christ will spend eternity in hell.  Nevertheless, even those who propose doctrinal theories such as universalism and inclusivism (or those who promote annihilationism with reference to hell) must admit that their position does not represent what most Christians throughout the centuries have believed — or believe now.  We should be concerned that these theories may be spreading in influence, but it should hardly be surprising to find that an evangelical pastor preaches historic Christianity.

What this article in Newsweek represents is the absolute confidence that discovering people who believe that those who do not believe in Christ will go to hell is supposed to be shocking.

So we find in Sarah Palin’s pastor an evangelical who believes in hell and preaches the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means of escaping hell.  In other words, he is an evangelical preaching like an evangelical.  Alert the media.

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How serious is your faith? How serious are you about what God says in His Word? It is imperative that we know what the Bible says and be assured that it is correct. If the Bible is true (and it is) then we must be strong and secure in our convictions about it. Here is a story from MSNBC about how Americans feel about their religious beliefs.

Tags: Convictions, Faith, Truth