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).

* * *

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."

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at February 12, 2009 | Comments (22)

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.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at November 19, 2008 | Comments (10)

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.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at November 17, 2008 | Comments (10)

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?

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at August 15, 2008 | Comments (5)

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.

Posted by Stan Guthrie at July 1, 2008 | Comments (10)

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.

Posted by Susan Wunderink at November 14, 2007 | Comments (1)

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

Posted by David Neff at October 18, 2007 | Comments (71)

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?"

Posted by Rob Moll at July 16, 2007 | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Rob Moll at May 24, 2007 | Comments (2)

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.

Posted by Rob Moll at May 24, 2007 | Comments (1)

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."

Posted by Rob Moll at May 22, 2007 | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Rob Moll at May 3, 2007 | Comments (12)