Tuesday Roundup

RELIEF VOLUNTEERS
Linda Gilmore, who I know from a few of the Covenant email lists, has gone to Mississippi this week, along with volunteers from her church, to help out with relief. Alright!!! Link

BTW, donations to relief now exceed $1 billion.


REBUILD IT TO FLOAT
Randy might be onto something with his suggestion that instead of hauling in fill dirt, New Orleans could be built to float. After all, that seems to be the futuristic rage. What about tethered pontoons hidden under each home? In Seattle and Tiburon people pay big bucks to live on floating houses.


WONDERFUL STORY OF NOLA MINISTRY
An Episcopal priest tells the story of how he is ministering through the crisis -- of trying to regroup his flock -- and the fate of their church building. Link


NEW TWIST ON THE SCREW
An Illinois engineer has reinvented the screw.


EASTERN ORTHODOX LITURGY
Great, short, intro on charleston.net -- registration required -- but worth it.

One thing Fr John Parker says of Orthodox worship is that, "It calms; it does not excite the emotions." This is in contrast to Protestant and Evangelical worship where the goal is often to rouse the emotions and the passions -- to get people "pumped up" for the Lord (which can be done in a number of different ways).

So, should worship calm or stimulate the emotions? Why?


"ENOUGH!"
The Pacific Southwest Region, composed of some 300 American Baptist churches in Southern California, Southern Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Hawaii, says they are disengaging from their parent denomination, the American Baptist Church, at the end of the year. The problem is the denomination's "liberal" approach to homosexuality.

The West Virginia Baptist Convention of American Baptist churches will vote on a similar proposal in October.

The denomination has issued a response.

The latest on the Anglican schism over homosexuality.

An article in Touchstone magazine concedes the cultural battle on this issue -- the mainstreaming of homosexual relations is now a reality in the US. As I see it, the underlying issue with which the denominations are struggling is not really sexuality. Rather they are trying to figure out how much, if at all, they should be a part of the mainstream anything.


NON-BELIEVERS START LOBBYING EFFORT
There is a new lobbyist in DC -- Lori Lipman Brown -- representing the Secular Coalition for America. Her two goals: keep religion out of government and win respect for a stigmatized minority -- atheists, humanists, and freethinkers.

I seriously doubt that the battle for the heart of America will be won or lost in Washington, DC. Most evangelical Christians haven't figured that out, yet, either.


THE NEW POP-UPS
Dan Gillmor has a bunch of readers busy trying to figure out how to block the new style pop-ups. Why would any company want to do something that annoys readers. It seems that people would begin to associate their name and product with the annoyance they are experiencing. Go figure.


CLEANER AIR
They say that our air has been relatively clean for the past three years. Still, we in the Central Valley of California have one of the worst air pollution problems in the nation -- in some ways worse than Southern California. At least we're moving in the right direction -- and that is in spite of rapid population growth.