Update (May 24): Prosecutors have charged Herbert and Catherine Schaible with third-degree murder after a medical examiner ruled the death of their 7-month-old (from bacteria pneumonia and dehydration) to be a homicide.

The Schaible's church is one of two faith-healing churches in Philadelphia linked to the deaths of 24 children since 1971, reports a local NBC affiliate.

Paul Offit, leader of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's infectious diseases division, told NBC 10 that he is writing a writing a book about a 1990s measles outbreak among church members. “Although you are allowed to martyr yourself to your religion, you are not allowed to martyr your child to your religion,” he said.

CNN also examines the charges.

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Herbert and Catherine Schaible are still serving probation for the death of their child in 2009, but the Pennsylvania couple could face new charges after they violated the terms of their probation by letting another die.

Update (June 10): The Tennessean explores viable solutions to critiques laid out in Kathryn Joyce’s The Child Catchers. In addition to featuring adoptive families “with heart for missions,” the series of three articles suggest that child sponsorship, foster care, and support of adoptive families can help address differences in communication across cultures, raising orphans’ quality of life and leaving adoption as a last—though potentially successful—option.

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Update (June 3): In a front-page story, The New York Times examined the evangelical adoption movement. It notes:

David M. Smolin, director of Samford University’s Center for Children, Law, and Ethics in Alabama and an evangelical, said the new movement has often fallen into the same traps that led a succession of countries, including Guatemala, Cambodia, Vietnam and Nepal, to close down all foreign adoptions after baby-selling scandals. “Now people are repeating the same mistakes in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” he said.

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Update (May 10): CT editor Timothy C. Morgan reviewed Kathryn Joyce's Child Catchers, saying that Joyce "demonizes overseas adoption through agenda-driven journalism." Similarly, Her.meneutics author Megan Hill says Joyce's book focuses on a few cases of adoption with negative consequences, missing out on how adoption benefits women.
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Last week, author Kathryn Joyce slammed the "evangelical movement's adoption obsession," critiquing what she calls an "epic mismatch of children's needs and parents' propensities."

But defenders of the evangelical adoption movement are speaking out against Joyce's claims, just in time for the release this week of her new book, The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption.

New research from professors at Baylor University suggests prior studies purporting to show a link between divorce and children's religiosity as adults may be overstated.

The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) has declared that one adoption agency with a policy "discriminating" against non-Catholic families—and same-sex couples in particular—is operating in breach of Scotland's equality law.

Update (May 14): Baptist Press (BP) reports that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has denied Uwe and Hannelore Romeike's case for asylum, upholding a Board of Immigration Appeals ruling.

Judges ruled that the Romeikes, who left Germany in order to homeschool their children, "did not make a sufficient case" for their fear of persecution, according to BP.

RNS offers more details.

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Update (April 23): As lawyers for Uwe and Hannelore Romeike prepare to argue their case in court today, Religion News Service reports that the unusual deportation case of the German asylum-seekers will focus "on a parent’s right to teach their children at home, which isn’t allowed in the Romeikes’ native Germany."
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In 2010, a Tennessee judge granted asylum to a German family who feared persecution from their government for their decision to homeschool their children.The unusual decision pushed persecution boundaries—while the German government was not motivated by religion to persecute Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, it was frustrating the family's faith, said judge Lawrence Burman.

Now, three years later, the Romeikes are still in the middle of a deportation battle.

Moroccan children adopted by Spanish families will be monitored by the Moroccan government until they reach the age of 18—but not to check up on their overall well being. Instead, Morocco intends to ensure that the adopted children remain culturally and religiously Muslim.

As CT previously noted, the number of international adoptions keeps falling to new lows, both in the United States and worldwide.

However, the State Department's 2012 Report on Intercountry Adoption includes a number of other interesting stats on adoption trends. Here are five of our picks:

A new study suggests that children raised in divorce—even "good" divorces—are less likely to attend religious services and express interest in God than children raised in happy marriages.

Observers say this implies the future health of churches could depend on getting non-traditional family ministries right.

Update (June 6): ECFA has released updated statistics showing that donations to large nonprofits are on the rise. Yet small nonprofits are not as fortunate: Donations to these organizations in 2012 decreased for the second year in a row.

According to ECFA, "Organizations with under $5 million in annual revenues saw cash donations decrease by 3.6 percent in 2012, while those above $5 million in revenue saw a 2 percent increase. Charities with under $1 million in annual revenues saw cash donations decrease by 9.6 percent."

CT has spotlighted what type of ministries receive the most money.

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Although charitable giving to member organizations has decreased nearly 2 percent, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) reports that evangelical support for child-related ministries continues to rise—and even more so for short-term missions.

Update (Jan. 18): The New York Times is reporting that Russia's controversial ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian orphans will not go into effect for another year. Due to a bilateral adoption agreement signed between the U.S. and Russia in 2011, which requires either country to give 12 months notice before withdrawing, the new law signed by Putin in December will receive temporary reprieve.

But the announcement of the adoption ban's delay was not enough to stop more than 20,000 protesters from marching through Moscow last weekend, questioning the "morality of a ban on adoptions by Americans in a country where so many children are in foster care or orphanages."

That could be good news for the 50 or so U.S. families whose adoptions are in the process of being finalized, but the exact effect of the delay is not yet clear.
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Michigan lawmakers are set to consider a new adoption bill that would guarantee faith-based adoption agences the freedom to make placement decisions based on their faith.

Editor's note: This post has been updated with a press release from Pat Robertson.

It's not unusual for comments by Pat Robertson to provoke heated reactions. But this time, what's unusual is the subject matter: adoption.

Robertson recently expressed affirmation on The 700 Club for men who don't want to date women who have children adopted from foreign countries, notes Associated Baptist Press. His comments -- including, "You don’t have to take on somebody else’s problems" -- provoked a strong rebuke from Russell Moore, a Southern Baptist Theological Seminary dean who has become a prominent advocate for adoption.

"This is not just a statement we ought to disagree with," wrote Moore on his blog. "This is of the devil."

A German appeals court has ruled that parents do not have the right to circumcise their sons for religious reasons because the parents' right to religious freedom does not justify the physical harm done to the human body.

The court, assessing a lawsuit brought against a Muslim doctor over a botched circumcision, said that circumcision "contravenes the interests of the child to decide later on his religious beliefs," as well as causes "serious and irreversible interference in the integrity of the human body." Despite the millions of Muslims and approximately 100,000 Jews that call Germany home, the court said religious freedom would not be impaired by its ruling because children could later decide on their own whether to be circumcised.

Germany's Jewish council condemned the decision as “an unprecedented and dramatic intrusion on the self-determination of religious communities.”

The ruling casts a legal cloud on doctors who perform infant circumcisions, but still gives male circumcision different standing in Germany than female circumcision because there is no law prohibiting it and the ruling isn't binding for other courts.

Prompted by a proposed ballot question in San Francisco last year, CT's David Neff has weighed in on criminalizing circumcision, arguing that America may have secularized the ancient Jewish rite but it is still inescapably religious.

Update (Jan. 25): Fresh stats from the State Department indicate that adoptions of foreign children by Americans have fallen to a new low: less than 8,700 in 2012, down from a high of almost 23,000 in 2004. The New York Times has details.

CT recently noted how American evangelicals have pivoted to adopt other types of children in response.

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International adoptions worldwide dropped from a high of 45,000 in 2004 to an estimated 25,000 last year, prompting debate over whether restrictions designed to protect babies from abuse have been too successful.

The sharp decline comes amid a demonstrable surge of interest in adoption by U.S. evangelicals.

Evangelical giving toward adoption-related causes increased almost 15 percent in 2010, the last year analyzed by ECFA.

Christianity Today has reported regularly on international adoption news, including how adoption has surged in popularity among evangelicals, how the high-profile Haiti adoption scandal might impact such efforts, how crackdowns in Ethiopia reduced adoptions by 90 percent, and debate over the ethics of international adoption.

Update (May 13, 2013): Reuters reports that the newly released list of most commonly used baby names includes some unlikely contenders—"less traditional, but more attention-grabbing names. Messiah was the fourth fastest-growing name for boys, rising to 387th in 2012 from the 633th spot in 2011, according to the [U.S. Social Security Administration]."

But New Zealand won't be seeing a greater number of "Messiahs" running around. The island nation has banned use of the name "Messiah," along with other biblical picks "Lucifer" and "Christ."
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The list of most-popular names for babies born in 2011 has been released by the Social Security Administration, and the parsing has begun.

Four of the top ten names for both boys and girls have biblical roots, notes the Washington Post. Popular biblical names have shifted from the New Testament to the Old Testament, "baby name wizard" Laura Wattenberg told the Associated Press.

CT recently charted trends in biblical names and examined whether giving children biblical names enhances their spiritual development.

Rush Limbaugh’s June 5 marriage to girlfriend Kathryn Rogers has generated a lot of discussion. Much of it is about his surprise reception singer, Sir Elton John — but a few people have commented on his choice of pastor.

Ken “The Hutch” Hutcherson, a former NFL player and the famously pro-family pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, Wash., officiated at the conservative radio icon’s fourth wedding.

"He had asked me to come to the wedding, and his uncle, Judge [Stephen] Limbaugh, was supposed to do the entire service, and there were some complications," Hutcherson told CT.

Judge Limbaugh could not solemnize a marriage in Florida, so Rush asked Hutcherson to make it official.

“Uncle Steve led it off, and then the Hutch, in his own inimitable way secured the deal,” Limbaugh told his audience on his June 15 radio show.

Some have questioned why Hutcherson, well-known for his pro-marriage stand, would preside at the thrice-divorced Limbaugh’s Palm Beach, Fla. ceremony. The former Dallas Cowboys linebacker uses a football analogy to explain why he felt he ought to be a part of it:

"The Buffalo Bills went to the Super Bowl and they lost a lot of times, but they never gave up," Hutcherson said. "Rush Limbaugh never gave up on the institution of marriage."

The wedding, he says, was “absolutely fantastic,” with the couple “committing themselves to Jesus Christ.” If they are growing in Christ, Hutcherson believes, a couple won’t have a hard time growing together.

And Hutcherson says he didn’t mince words in his message to the bride and groom.

"If anyone knows me they know that I would not bite my tongue [about what makes] a successful marriage," he said, namely: "There's no such thing until there's 'death do us part.'"

Hutcherson says that a number of the guests, including conservative luminary Sean Hannity and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, came up afterwards to thank him for his message.

Surprise over Hutcherson’s part in the wedding was nothing compared to the transatlantic — correction, worldwide — bemusement surrounding Elton John’s concert at the reception.

Hutcherson says he and the assembled guests greatly appreciated the knighted pop idol’s unexpected performance.

"It was a great concert. It was surprising," Hutcherson said. "Rush and Katherine didn't let anybody know" that John was coming.

"I think Elton was blown away by the reception he got," Hutcherson said, musing that if Limbaugh had shown up to a liberal crowd, he would not have gotten as warm a reception as John did at the Limbaugh wedding.

After his honeymoon, Limbaugh returned to the air June 15.

(Image source: Wikipedia User: Apache119)

James Dobson has stepped away from Focus on the Family, but he hasn't retired entirely.

Dobson announced on his Facebook fan page that he will begin a nonprofit and radio show with his son called James Dobson on the Family, which will be based in Colorado Springs. Dobson wrote that the organization will deal with the following: marriage, child-rearing, family finances, medical and psychological concerns, national issues, the sanctity of human life, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Dobson asks for donations as he estimates operating costs to be at $2 million. “We are in a moral decline of shocking dimensions,” Dobson writes. “I have asked myself how I can sit and watch the world go by without trying to help if I can.”

The Gazette reports that Focus on the Family’ budget dropped from $160 million in 2008 to $139 million in 2009 while its workforce went from 1,400 in 2002 to 860 in 2009.

Calvary Chapel?Golden Springs, a nondenominational megachurch in Diamond Bar, California, will be providing assistance in the form of childcare to Nadya Suleman, the single mother whose birth to octuplets by in-vitro fertilization January 26 has received much media attention (and criticism) the last two weeks.

Pastor Rex Wolins told the Whittier Daily News that Calvary's women's ministry is gathering volunteers to help Suleman once her octuplets, born nine weeks premature but in good health, come home from the hospital. Suleman has six other children ages 2?7 who were also conceived by in-vitro fertilization.

Suleman and her publicist told Whittier Daily News that she attended Calvary in the past. "[Suleman] thought it was a wonderful church," said publicist Mike Furtney. "She was more than delighted to take her kids up there. I think they went there frequently."

Pastor Wolins says he does not remember Suleman and does not know other members who do. "We just know this person is extremely hurting . . . and this church wants to take care of needs, whether she did or she didn't attend this church," said Wolins.

According to yesterday's Los Angeles Times, Suleman has no job or income, and owes $50,000 in student loans. Beyond Calvary's support, Suleman may also qualify to receive large amounts of public assistance in the form of food stamps, healthcare reimbursements from Medi-Cal, and federal security income for her three children who are disabled (not including the octuplets).

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Update: Calvary Chapel released a statement on Friday, February 13, saying that, in contrast to the claims of Ms. Suleman and Whittier Daily News 's story, the church will not be providing her assistance in the form of establishing a foundation, providing monies, or helping her find a house. Associate pastor Beau De Graffenreid made the following statement in a recorded press conference: "[W]e are unable to confirm or deny whether she actively attends Calvary Chapel, Golden Springs. We can say, however, that no one currently on staff knows her, and to the best of our knowledge, Ms. Suleman's only contact with us was a minor inquiry regarding our children's ministry."

However, Pastor De Graffenreid goes on to say that his church is "relieved that the birth of these infants was successful. Because of the physical and emotional strain that these eight newborn babies will place upon her and her other six children, they will be in need of spiritual guidance, childcare assistance 24 hours a day from her local community for many years to come . . . We would ask that Christians everywhere pray for her and these babies."

Focus on the Family will stop publishing four of its eight magazines, the ministry told Religion News Service.

The ministry, founded by James Dobson, announced earlier this week that it will cut around 200 positions on it's staff of about 1,150.

Adelle M. Banks writes:

The print edition of "Plugged In," an entertainment review guide for parents, will continue through its online version, Schneeberger said. Three other publications, Breakaway, Brio, and Brio and Beyond, which were aimed at teenagers, will be revamped into online content.

"The content that was found in those publications will still be available online, but it will be targeted not at teens but at parents," he said.

One of the four remaining magazines, Citizen, will be reduced from 12 issues to 10 issues a year. Earlier this fall, the ministry cut 46 other staff positions by outsourcing the department that filled orders and distributed books.

Focus on the Family will drop 202 positions - about 15 percent of its staff - in the coming weeks, the Colorado Springs Gazette reports.

The organization will layoff 149 employees and eliminate 53 vacant positions on its staff of about 1,200 people. Its budget will be reduced from $160 million this year to $138 million in 2009, Bill Reed writes.

Barb Cotter, an editor at the Gazette, wants to know if the organization could have saved money had it not donated $500,000-plus donation to Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage. "It all has to do with the division between Focus and its political arm, Focus on the Family Action, and a host of IRS and nonprofit rules that come into play," she writes.

The Gazette wrote earlier that this comes on the heels of Focus' announcement in October that 46 employees would be reassigned or laid off next year.

The Colorado Independent writes that the organization employed more than 1,500 people in 1991. But in 2006, the ministry cut nearly 30 positions and did not fill 83 positions, and in 2007, it dropped another 30 positions. In 2003, the ministry's budget was about $125 million and it employed about 1,300 people.

Nationally syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker released a book this summer that may prove an unlikely ally for those concerned about the lack of engaged men in American churches. In Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care, Parker identifies our cultural moment as one in which it's acceptable to portray men as dumb, violent, sex-crazed, or irresponsible husbands and fathers. (Movies and TV shows like Everybody Loves Raymond, Two and a Half Men, and Knocked Up, to name but a few, typify this depiction.)

Parker, who frequently writes on families and sexuality, believes cultural "male-bashing" in part comes from the mainstreaming of a feminism that assumes men must be devalued so that women may rise to a place of equal treatment politically and professionally. What is refreshing about Parker's argument is that it's rooted not in shrill, anti-feminist rhetoric (she calls herself a feminist), but in Parker's personal history and current family situation: She was raised by a single father after her mother died, and now has three young boys. Her adolescence was marked by the realization that men are, well, human. Here's how she described it to Karen Spears Zacharias:

Each day after school, I joined [my father] at his law office where I did my homework until he finished up. Once home, we convened in the kitchen where he cooked while I perched on a wooden stool peeling potatoes. We talked.
In that ritualized communion, I learned many useful lessons about the opposite sex. I learned that men like to talk while doing something else. . . . I learned that fathers adore their children and will sacrifice anything to help them succeed. I learned that fathers will lay their lives down for their children. I learned that men are capable of honor, valor, compassion and courage and that they are essential to instilling those virtues in their sons and daughters.

Given Parker's thoroughly personalized vision of men and subsequent sensitivity to male-bashing, some of the antidotes to American churches' lack of men offered by David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going to Church and ChurchforMen.com, strike me as ironic. Could it be that Murrow's solutions -- shorter, to-the-point sermons, action-oriented worship songs like "Onward Christian Soldiers," ministries that feature cars or extreme sports -- play on the very caveman stereotypes that belittle men instead of help them utilize their gifts through full participation in church life?

In the four decades since Paul Ehrlich published his demographic jeremiad, The Population Bomb, demographers have largely worried that the earth is getting too crowded. Contemporary proponents point to supposed signs of climate change, food shortages, and commodities inflation as evidence that Ehrlich was right. However, now comes word that in some parts of the world the key problem is not too many people, but too few. Russell Shorto's absorbing June 29 article in The New York Times Magazine informs us:

In the 1990s, European demographers began noticing a downward trend in population across the Continent and behind it a sharply falling birthrate. Non-number-crunchers largely ignored the information until a 2002 study by Italian, German and Spanish social scientists focused the data and gave policy makers across the European Union something to ponder. The figure of 2.1 is widely considered to be the "replacement rate" - the average number of births per woman that will maintain a country's current population level. At various times in modern history - during war or famine - birthrates have fallen below the replacement rate, to "low" or "very low" levels. But Hans-Peter Kohler, Jos? Antonio Ortega and Francesco Billari - the authors of the 2002 report - saw something new in the data. For the first time on record, birthrates in southern and Eastern Europe had dropped below 1.3. For the demographers, this number had a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country's population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible to recover. Kohler and his colleagues invented an ominous new term for the phenomenon: "lowest-low fertility."

The hypothesis Shorto presents is that nations that have only half-heartedly embraced modern society's welcoming of women into the paid workforce by failing to provide state financial incentives or career flexibility inadvertently end up providing strong disincentives for couples to have children. Shorto notes that as modern culture continues marching around the world, population shrinkage is far from solely a European problem. He reports that countries as diverse as Iran, South Korea, and Thailand are also facing alarming drop-offs in fecundity.

One thing left largely unexplored in this lengthy piece, however, are those traditionalists - of whatever faith - who reject the modern project to push both parents into the paid workforce and who opt instead to raise their children without recourse to state surrogates. While a second income is an economic necessity for many parents today (even given the existence of financial incentives to work), the article fails to consider that many - if finances were not an issue - would prefer to be home with their children during their formative years. How better to pass on religiously based knowledge, traditions, and character traits to the next generation and avoid the corrosive, occasionally life-denying, tenets of modernity?

Hat tip: Yehiel Poupko.

Men's Fraternity
If I were to start leading a men's ministry, this would be my first stop. And I would order the video series The Quest for Authentic Manhood, by Robert Lewis. My library would eventually include all of the resources found here.

Man in the Mirror
Imagine finding some of the best books on issues at the hearts of men for only $1! Pat Morley offers a number of his materials, including Bible studies, leadership training, and his popular No Man Left Behind seminars.

Men of Integrity
This site helps men get spiritually grounded with thought-provoking devotionals and articles, as well as Todd Wilson's columns of "dad" advice (even my wife loves his writing). Links and forums are also available, along with a solid list of recommended books.

MensministryConnection.com
Guys need to stay connected, and an e-mail newsletter can help make it happen. This site explains how. What kinds of events attract men? Find answers here.

Promise Keepers
Can't make it to a Promise Keepers event near you? Not to worry. Get it right here with webcasts and PK on Demand. Some of the classic PK event messages are at your fingertips.

Crosswalk.com
Crosswalk is a superb daily-discipleship resource for both men and women. Its site for men offers discussion topics, movie reviews, and a resource storehouse.

Christianity Today has repeatedly discussed the problems generated by no-fault divorce in the United States and the problem of the church's therapeutic accommodation to it. Readers should see for example, "The Christian Divorce Culture," an editorial from the year 2000. We received a lot of negative mail from readers who felt we were insufficiently sensitive to the feelings of divorced Christians. Our concerns were also expressed in the 2006 interview with Elizabeth Marquardt, which examines the painful impact of divorce on children.

So we were surprised at the way a number of people interpreted David Instone-Brewer's recent CT cover story, "What God Has Joined." Despite what some readers thought, Instone-Brewer's article did not contradict CT's consistent message, nor did it give people carte blanche on divorce (though we admit, we could have made that point more strongly).

Instead, Instone-Brewer's article was designed to help us understand Jesus' own words in his own religious and cultural context. Jesus' words on divorce have admittedly been problematic, and scholars have wrestled for centuries trying to understand their precise meaning. Multiple New Testament scholars that we respect have said they think Instone-Brewer's book has the analysis right. (For CT, Instone-Brewer just sketched out the general shape of his analysis, and we pointed readers to his IVP book for the details.)

Instone-Brewer's argument does not give us an infinitely elastic set of reasons for divorce, but it does recognize that marriage is constituted by more than sex, so that marriage can be irreparably harmed by something other than adultery. If, for example, a husband consistently fails to provide material support to his wife, then surely the marriage is as broken as if the husband has committed adultery.

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I suspect that most of my divorced friends are not divorced because a spouse failed to provide the biblical basics of marriage that Instone-Brewer identified. They divorced because they had trouble getting along or they had "fallen out of love" or they had "outgrown the relationship." None of those divorces are justified by Instone-Brewer's understanding of the text. Curiously, one blogger claimed that Instone-Brewer had said that if we are insufficiently "honored" by our spouses, we can legitimately divorce. I don't think so. As I carefully re-read Instone-Brewer's article, he said that our formal vows of "love, honor, and keep" reflect the Mosaic requirements of "food, clothing, and marital rights." (Instone-Brewer used the euphemistic "love" where most English translations of Exodus 21:10 use "marital rights" or "conjugal rights.") That is not creating an elastic "dishonoring" grounds for divorce, but it is defining "honor" in terms of its biblical roots. (Think of the old Prayer Book wedding service: "With my body I thee worship.")

But then I do know a few people who have been divorced following physical abuse or failure to provide. Those divorces, after one partner persisted in abuse or neglect after repeated attempts to restore the marriage, are indeed covered by Instone-Brewer. People who say they have been hurt by such a divorce should probably not blame the divorce, but the party who failed to live up to his promises.

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Some have also complained that Instone-Brewer's reasoning involves using extra-biblical material to silence the plain meaning of Scripture. Extra-biblical material must be handled carefully, and yet it is something that pastors and Bible scholars do every day. In my own generation, we used Moulton and Milligan's The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament to get a sense for how the words the New Testament writers used would have been understood by their contemporaries. Without comparing the biblical books with similar extra-biblical material, we just cannot know what words or phrases would mean to their original readers.

Similarly, my generation of seminary students was urged to use Strack and Billerbeck's Commentary on the New Testament from Talmud and Midrash to tune in to the way in which rabbinic writers discussed issues similar to those tackled by Jesus and Paul. Indeed, without following the particular forms of those rabbinic arguments, we cannot appreciate the shape of Jesus' and Paul's arguments.

Scholarly investigation of the relationship between rabbinical discussion and the way the New Testament writers dealt with issue has moved way beyond Strack and Billerbeck. And David Instone-Brewer is one of those who has advanced it.

Curiously, the 16th-century Reformers were much closer to Instone-Brewer's conclusions than to many of our more conservative contemporary expositors. They didn't have Instone-Brewer's knowledge of rabbinic writing, but like him they came out with more grounds for divorce than many of our churches do. Zwingli and Bucer had the longest lists of grounds for divorce, but even they had clear reasons that could not be stretched to cover just any situation. Many of them were dealing with divorce in a social framework that was no longer dominated by the Roman church. At Trent, Rome stuck by its narrow allowances for divorce and condemned these "liberal" Protestants. If Instone-Brewer is in line with these Reformers, his conclusions are hardly radical.

I am sorry that this particular cover story in CT struck many readers the way it did. We are seriously concerned about the effects of no-fault divorce in our society and the devastating impact it has on the economic and emotional lives of children. We urge churches not to succumb to the therapeutic society's tendency to indulge divorce. Instead, the church must reconnect with a strong marital ideal taught by the Bible and the church. We can teach that ideal to our young people. But we need not punish those whose spouses persistently fail to live up to their vows.

Elizabeth Marquardt writes in today's New York Times, "On April 30, a state Superior Court panel ruled that a child can have three legal parents. The case, Jacob v. Shultz-Jacob, involved two lesbians who were the legal co-parents of two children conceived with sperm donated by a friend. The panel held that the sperm donor and both women were all liable for child support."

There have been no legal and cultural reactions. So, it seems that having multiple parents will soon become legally accepted practice. "If more children are granted three legal parents," Marquardt writes, "what is our rationale for denying these families the rights and protections of marriage? America, get ready for the group-marriage debate."

"If we allow three legal parents," she says, "why not five?"

As I noted in my last post, when it comes to end of life issues, Christians are quick to talk about ethics. But advances in medicine have not just turned the end of life into an ethical minefield. The Wall Street Journal has an excellent front page story today on the increasing number of children caring from afar for their elderly parents. And they're doing so for extended periods of time.

When a parent is dying, the rest of life waits. Now, it often waits longer. As medical science gets better at pulling terminally ill patients from the brink of death, a loved one's final weeks can stretch into months or years. With families often spread across the country or globe, far-flung relatives face heart-rending choices as they wait for the end.

Reporter Susan Warren writes that one woman "took eight trips to her parents' home in Columbus, Ohio, staying weeks at a time. She used up all her vacation and sick time, and then took a family leave. She ran up more than $5,000 in airfare and estimates she lost $15,000 in salary."

For the family of Valliere Wilson, her death was emotionally exhausting, and not simply because their mother died. Wilson had cancer for 15 years. During that time, her children moved, one away from Wilson's home and one back. Two children lived in California and alternated weeks caring for their mother. Their brother's marriage was in tatters after he moved back to Dallas to be with his mother. They faced job pressures and the threat of being fired for taking so much time off to be with their mom.

Then, when Wilson's cancer spread to her lungs, the travelling, caring, and grieving shifted into high gear.

On Feb. 20, Cheryl was with her mother in Dallas, missing a staff meeting in Chicago. She grew worried about rumored layoffs at work. For the first time in her 26 years at the company, she'd gotten a poor annual review, based on low productivity. She'd asked for more work, but her supervisor had noted that it was probably better that she not be stretched while she was dealing with her mom. Cheryl acknowledged, "Actually, I couldn't handle any more."

Meanwhile, Charlotte had just been told that her company's Los Angeles office was closing at the end of the year and she would be out of a job. Cracks had begun surfacing in her longtime relationship with her boyfriend. "Everything was kind of falling to pieces," she said.

15 years after she was diagnosed with colon cancer, Wilson died in her Dallas home with her daughter beside her. It was worth the stress, all of her children agreed, in order to care for their mom as she died. "I always told Mom that I would be there for her when she needs me, and I was," Cheryl said.

But the stress is enormous. And more and more Americans are feeling it. Perhaps this is a topic even greater than bioethics for Christians to pay attention to. What sort of pressures does this put on a family? In what ways can we practice faithful dying while our family is spread across the country? How does this stress affect the medical treatment we want for our parents or they chose for themselves? (Being far away can cause some people to beg their parents to do anything to hang on until they have a chance to visit. On the other hand, a major reason people chose assisted suicide is because they feel they're a burden to their caregivers.)

There is a lot here to think about and which Christians are only beginning to talk about. If you're dealing with this, I am interested in hearing from you. Write me.

Our end-of-life rhetoric is typically limited, as Atul Gawande complains in The New York Times, to gaining more control over death. For some, this means passing legislation to allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of drugs that would prematurely kill a terminally ill patient. For many Christian groups, it means opposing physician-assisted-suicide or the withdrawl of life support from people who can't speak for themselves. For some people it means signing statements that ask doctors to do everything possible to keep them alive.

But, as Gawande points out, there is a lot of life to live between our active years and our dying days. "We don't like thinking about it, but after retirement age, about half of us eventually move into a nursing home, usually around age 80. ... But we don't much talk about getting more control over our lives in such places. "

The priority of a nursing home is to keep residents safe, Gawande says. Describing one woman who recently entered a nursing home, he writes, "Basic matters, like when she goes to bed, wakes up, dresses, and eats were put under the rigid schedule of institutional life. Her main activities have become bingo, movies, and other forms of group entertainment."

This kind of living, he argues, takes the meaning out of life. "Surveys of nursing home residents reveal chronic boredom, loneliness, and lack of meaning - results not fundamentally different from prisoners, actually."

It doesn't have to be this way. Some nursing homes are rethinking institutional life for the disabled elderly, and they are doing it within the confines of what the government will help pay for--an achievement indeed. Life can have meaning an purpose even when many of the things that provided fulfilment are no longer possible for us to do.

Certainly, being in a nursing home does not prohibit a meaningful life. One geriatrician told me he always tells his patients upon retirement, "Wake up knowing what you will do that day, and go to bed knowing someone was helped by what you did." Such a thing is possible, he points out, in a nursing home.

Yet, there is also a place here for the church. How can we better care for our widows, our widowers, our frail elderly. How can we give their lives meaning and keep them integrated into a church community?

This is a question baby boomers, who have already changed so much of the American church, are just begining to face.

A movement to pass legislation that would give birth certificates to women who deliver stillborn babies is provoking opposition from pro-choice groups.

The New York Times reports,

The birth-certificate laws, often referred to as "Missing Angels" bills, occupy uncertain territory, skirting the abortion debate while implicitly raising the question of fetal personhood.

Many antiabortion groups say the laws fill a need for parents. But some abortion rights supporters see the push for these laws as a barely disguised political move to undermine abortion rights.

In some states, local chapters of abortion rights groups have opposed the legislation. But at the national level, some abortion rights groups are comfortable with the laws, if they are drafted carefully to cover naturally occurring fetal death and not late-term abortion.

One woman recounted receiving a death certificate after her daughter was stillborn. "When I called and asked for my daughter's birth certificate, the woman asked how she died, and when I told her, she said I didn't have a baby, I had a fetus, and I couldn't get a birth certificate."

Martin Marty's Sightings column is typically worth reading. After the decades he has spent as a religion scholar, his columns will educate nearly every reader.

Unfortunately half of Sightings columns are written by guests, and these tend toward infuriating rather than instructive. Today's column (not yet online [Update 5/4: It's up now]) by Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore is about spanking. She leads with the story of parents at Remnant Fellowship Church in Brentwood, Tennessee, who spanked their child, Josef Smith, to death and are now serving life sentences.

She says Remnant's "religious leader Gwen Shamblin encourages parents to spank their children, describing corporal punishment as a 'time-tested, ancient teaching of the Bible' necessary to shaping adherence to God's authority." Miller-McLemore fails to note that Remnant Fellowship is not a mainstream evangelical church, but tends toward aberrant Christian sect.

Miller-McLemore then criticizes critics of spanking, who call such disciplinary methods child abuse. She notes that sociological research "documents increased affection and paternal involvement as positively related to an emphasis on children's submission to parental authority and use of corporal punishment." And she says Christians should be wary of both the anti-spanking and pro-spanking groups. Miller-McLemore is right when she concludes, "For Christians, discipline means fostering conditions that induce a desire to love God and seek the good of others."

But Miller-McLemore is confused when she writes,

News about Josef Smith's death powerfully reminds us just how hazardous careless use of Christian proclamation can be, especially as it impacts those least able to protect themselves and most dependent on adult benevolence. Fervent promotion of doctrines about sin, obedience, and bending the will to God have had and can have devastating consequences.

Miller-McLemore does admit, "seeing children as sinful does not de facto lead to their harsh punishment." And she says Calvin and Augustine did not condone coporal punishment but found spiritual capacity in children.

Yet, she seems to see these examples as exceptions from the rule that "doctrines about sin, obedience, and bending the will to God" lead to abuse. In fact disregard for such doctrines has had far worse consequences. The idea that all people are sinful, children included, does not lead to abuse. If parents fail to apply the doctrines to themselves or find in them an excuse to abuse their children, it's no condemnation of the doctrine.

Miller-McLemore concludes, "For children in particular, what people believe about Jesus or God -- whether God demands obedience or offers love -- matters." She seems to be unable to consider that God both demands obedience and offers love. Parents too can demand obedience and enforce their demands with discipline while also tenderly loving their children.

Child abuse may be tied to bad or heretical doctrine, but it is not the result of classic Christian doctrines of sin and obedience to God. Ignoring those doctrines (especially when professing not to) is dangerous not just for children but for us all.