Pastor John Scripture Reference: II Samuel 13-15

   Dr. King and Christian Activism  As Americans observe Martin Luther King Day today, I am reminded of the rich Christian tradition of activism in this country. For millions of Christians who have gone before us, activism was considered fruit of the faith. Not only was the civil-rights movement led by evangelical Christians like Dr. King, so too were campaigns for abolition and women’s suffrage heavily influenced by Christians expressing their faith.

  4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 (NIV)

  Once an atheist, C. S. Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931. An Oxford and Cambridge don, his writing spanned several genres: children’s literature, science fiction, and apologetics. Lewis addressed pressing issues in academia, the Church, and society at large. His pithy responses often debunked erroneous ideas. In the quote below, he reduces to absurdity the supposition that the universe happened by chance.

Pastor John Scripture Reference: 1Timothy 3:1-7

  Most Americans marry just once, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The American Community Survey, an ongoing statistical portrait of the characteristics of the nation’s population, found that of 3 million people, 76 percent of those who had ever married have married only once.

  Many people are atheists because they believe that evil and suffering in the world proves that God does not exist. Looking back on his own intellectual and spiritual journey from atheism to Christian belief, however, C. S. Lewis argued quite the opposite. Whilst the suffering he experienced in his youth (the death of his mother, unhappy schooldays, and the traumas of service in the First World War) destroyed the simple faith of his childhood, he eventually came to realize that atheism is a superficial and inconsistent response to the problem of evil. For how, he argued, can anyone explain […]

  “Tradition,” wrote G. K. Chesterton, “means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.”1 Imagining that Chesterton was right, and our ancestors were allowed to go to the polls, they would most certainly arrive en masse on Election Day to strike down any referendum seeking, for example, to normalize gay marriage. If the pollsters narrowed their focus to the major living religious traditions throughout history, they would find a common thread: all of them—Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—in varying degrees contain prescriptions against homosexuality.

At 6:30 PM, on Sunday, February 14, the winter West Africa team will give their ministry report. 

  When John Venn (1759-1813) arrived as pastor of the Clapham Church, he found that the funds to care for the poor were insufficient for the destitute in his parish. Venn, therefore, revived the Clapham Poor Society, which provided assistance subsidies to help the poor buy bread, coal, and potatoes at greatly reduced costs.