Podcast: Melissa Rogers Interview

Podcast (27MB Mp3) of Dr. Bruce Prescott's 7-12-09 "Religious Talk" radio interview with Melissa Rogers, Director of Wake Forest University School of Divinity Center for Religion and Public Affairs. We talk about the judicial record of Supreme Court nominee Sonya Sotomayor regarding church-state issues, about her work on President Obama's advisory council on Faith-based and Community Partnerships, and her work at Wake Forest University.

ACLU Seeks to End Censorship of Religious Material

The ACLU has sent a letter to the Superintendent of Rappahannock, Virginia's Regional Jail demanding that he put an end to a policy that censors biblical passages from the incoming mail received by inmates. Here's the most forceful paragraph of the letter:

It is astonishing that such censorship of the Bible and other religious material could occur in an American jail in the Twenty-First Century. Even the novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky had ready access to scripture while incarcerated in a Siberian prison camp in tsarist Russia, and on our shores, "[t]here is no iron curtain drawn between the Constitution and the prisons of this country." "Even after the prison gates slam behind an inmate," the Constitution protects, "those precious personal rights by which we satisfy [the] basic yearnings of the human spirit."

Thanks for the Kind Words

Robert Parham at Ethics Daily has posted a complimentary review of the program we are putting together for our New Baptist Covenant regional meeting. I am most appreciative of his concluding paragraph:

Norman is a must-attend meeting for goodwill Baptists. Pre-register today. Don't miss a content-rich, network-building experience that transcends the racial, ethnic, theological, political and cultural boundaries that keep too many Baptists apart. Be a part of the new Baptist future.

Getting people to pre-register is particularly important to us at this time.

AIG Still Shameless About Feeding at the Public Trough

AIG wants to dole out millions more in taxpayer dollars for bonuses and incentives.

Ronald Reagan's imaginary welfare queens could never match the gall of real life Wall Street executives.

Gimme Five

It slipped by me, but a couple weeks ago I completed my fifth year of blogging.

It doesn't seem like it has been that long, until I think about it.

Is Global Warming Real?

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the answer is YES. The average temperature is rising. Here's a link to NOAA's recently released talking points about Climate Change. Here's a quote:

Q. Is there any question that surface temperatures in the United States have been rising rapidly during the last 50 years?

A. None at all. Even if NOAA did not have weather observing stations across the length and breadth of the United States the impacts of the warming are unmistakable. For example, lake and river ice is melting earlier in the spring and forming later in the fall. Plants are blooming earlier in the spring. Mountain glaciers are melting. Coastal temperatures are rising. And a multitude of species of birds, fish, mammals and plants are extending their ranges northward and, in mountainous areas, upward as well.

Second Month Photo

While I was spending time with the brethren at the CBF General Assembly in Houston, Kylene was celebrating James' second month down in Mississippi.

She's convinced that he's the most remarkable grandchild ever born and submits this picture as proof.

Who am I to disagree?