From:  Stanley Scism

Washington: President Barack Obama has hit the road to push a new $4.35 billion grant programme to encourage American schools to develop internationally competitive standards to let its students take on “folks in Beijing and Bangalore.”

The “Race to the Top” fund is one of the largest federal investments in school reform in US history, Obama said on a trip to Wisconsin Wednesday. It is being financed with money made available through the economic stimulus plan enacted in February.

“We’re putting over $4 billion on the table … but we’re not just handing it out to states because they want it,” Obama told an audience at a Wisconsin public charter school making it clear that the grants will go to only those “committed to real change in the way you educate your kids.”

“So, a race to the top has begun in our schools, but the real competition will begin when states apply for the actual Race to the Top grants,” he said outlining four key reform measures that will be used to help determine a state’s eligibility for grant money.

“The first measure is whether a state is committed to setting higher standards and better assessments that prepare our children to succeed in the 21st century,” Obama said noting that 48 US states are now working to develop internationally competitive standards.

“…Internationally competitive standards because these young people are going to be growing up in an international environment where they’re competing not just against kids in Chicago or Los Angeles for jobs, but they’re competing against folks in Beijing and Bangalore,” he said.

Second, the state will need to demonstrate a commitment to policies designed to encourage the recruitment and retention of effective teachers and principals. Conversely, teachers that fail to adequately perform need to be removed, he said.

Third, it will need to design systems to measure student success. Finally, federal officials will examine whether a state is taking steps to overhaul its lowest-performing schools.

“We’ll look at whether they’re willing to remake a school from top to bottom, with new leaders and a new way of teaching,” Obama said. The process of doing so may include replacing a school’s staff or even closing a school and sending its students to a better one nearby, he noted.

Bush legacy remains Obama’s biggest problem

A year after his historic election, President Barack Obama sought to remind Americans on Wednesday the biggest problems he is grappling with — from the economy to the war in Afghanistan — are the legacy of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

With his approval ratings down from once-lofty levels and Tuesday’s Democratic election losses raising questions about his political clout, Obama held no special ceremony to mark the anniversary of his election as America’s first black president.

He instead traveled to Wisconsin to appear before a friendly audience in a school gymnasium and promote education as a pillar of his economic recovery efforts.

Promise of sweeping change

Obama was elected on a promise of sweeping change after eight years under Bush, but many Americans are increasingly expressing impatience that his pledge has yet to bear fruit.

He used the preamble of his speech to insist his administration had indeed had important successes and also to remind Americans of the litany of daunting challenges he inherited when he took office in January.

“One year ago, Americans all across this country went to the polls and cast ballots for the future they wanted to see,” Obama said.

But he said his administration was also confronted with a “financial crisis that threatened to plunge our economy into a Great Depression, the worst that we’ve seen in generations.”

“We had record deficits, two wars, frayed alliances around the world,” Obama added.

He said his administration had acted swiftly to save the economy from “imminent collapse.”

“While we still have a long way to go, we have made meaningful progress toward achieving that goal,” he said.

Is he over playing the blame card?

Nine months into his term, Obama’s Republican critics have accused him of overplaying the “blame card” against Bush, a Republican who left office with one of the lowest poll ratings of any modern president.

Obama has seen his own approval numbers fall to the 50 percent range from above 70 percent as he struggles to push through a healthcare overhaul, reverse massive job losses and decide whether to send more troops to an increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan.

He took another hit to his political standing on Tuesday when voters elected Republicans in state governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey despite his personal campaigning for the Democratic candidates. The White House denied the election losses were in any way a referendum on the president.

Agencies

In ‘Church Search:  Why American churchgoers like to shop around’ (Slate, 2009 February 27), Andrew Santella researches the Obama family’s church search.  Maybe the family won’t decide until 2012 or (God forbid) 2016.  Maybe the DC area doesn’t have (though I doubt this) a pastor with sufficiently incidiary opinions to match Obama’s former pastor and so make feel at home a First Lady who only began to feel proud of the nation when her husband ran for its presidency, and a husband whose name proclaims Islamic blessings.

Still, we must understand that once their family makes this decision, changing it would add unwanted furor on what they probably view as a side issue to their main focus of socializing liberty.

The Obama daughters while they do their homework on Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation desk can sing with Toni Tennille ‘My Momma told me you’d better shop around’ as they wonder where they’ll attend church next, and with relief because about a seventh of American adults change churches each year, while another sixth rotate their attendance (says marketing research firm Barna Group).  They also change denominations–a Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life survey said in 2008 that 44% of American adults have changed religious affiliations, and summarized, ‘Constant movement characterizes the American religious marketplace’ (since most religious gatherings have music, could we call this ‘move to the music’?).

The way churches market sometimes unnerves people.  This starts with marques in front of the building (Santella’s example:  ‘Prevent truth decay:  Brush up on your Bible’) and extends to video and audio web streaming (which allows people to stay home on the Lazyboy, snacks and drinks in hand, and raise a glass to the parts of the service they like best).  Consultants use focus groups, surveys, product giveaways (Santella’s example:  ‘free church-branded Frisbees, anyone?’) and, in pretence to be seekers, secret visits to churches to evaluate them.  So they practice deceit in the seat.

Does that cause ‘P.U.’ in the pew, ‘potentially spiritually corrupting…ecclesiological chaos’ (as Anthony Sacramone said in First Things)?  Or is that just the voice of old, established churches afraid of losing members to people doing something to gain them?  For instance, Pope Benedict XVI said of the ‘new explosion of religion’:  ‘if it’s pushed too far, religion becomes almsot a consumer product.  People choose what they like and some are even able to make a profit from it’.  We must be indulgent with his sentences on profiteering (’pay for masses for the dead, anyone?’)–I wonder if he said this from St Peter’s Cathedral?  No wonder about 10% of American adults are ex-Catholics.

Since America has no state religion (Massachusetts hung onto an official church until 1833, then swung to the other extreme and elected Ted Kennedy as senator), ministers also have freedom to evangelize and establish people in their churches.  This combines with Americans’ fierce individualism and capitalist marketplace to produce a competitive religious marketplace with decreasing brand loyalty.  Roger Finke and Rodney Stark are partially wrong to argue in Churching of America 1776-1990 that the pastors are the sales force; in larger churches, it’s the ministerial staff.  And when this doesn’t work, it’s called a staff infection.

Of course, being paid on commission encourages salesmanship that tells people what they want to hear (’the dress suits you beautifully!) to tickle itching ears.  Tithe could do the same, but the total picture is this:  church competition has increased people’s interest in churches–Stark and Fink say that in 1776 fewer than 1/5 of Americans belonged to a local church, but now, it’s 2/3 (that’s about the same % that approve of legalized abortion, so get with it on your church search, Obamas!).

Barna Group says believers look first for doctrine and belief, second for aesthetics like music, parking and seating.  Therefore, maybe ministers will concentrate on being well-informed in God’s Word, and on expressing that Faith well.

On aesthetics, choice helps.  Pope Benedict XVI, being of the old school, is trying to bring back Catholic Classic by allowing Latin Mass.  Obama’s United Church of Christ has a wide variety of churches.  I’ve long felt that even an apostolic local church could have four services on the weekend (Saturday night youth service with really current music and style, message on planning, future; Sunday morning very formal, begowned, high church style, meaty message on Christian teaching; Sunday afternoon yuppie service with mellow worship choruses, dressy casual, message about Christian life today; Sunday night standard box suit, Southern/country gospel music, sermon on Second Coming) and then the church staff could pass out on Monday.  Midweek services could be house churches to give the personal touch people need, mutual prayer, mutual confession, mutual love–and perhaps get us back to our roots of simply following Jesus Christ.

by Stanley Scism
Pew Forum interviewed 35,000+ Americans age 18 and older to find out–hold on to your hats and seats!  Surprise, Surprise!–that religious affiliation in the US is very diverse and extremely fluid (article by Pew Research, ‘US Religous Landscape Survey Reveals a Fluid and Diverse Pattern of Faith’, article dated 2008 February 25).

NOTE:  Pew Forum used self-report as the measure–that is, a person is Catholic if he says he’s Catholic, whether he attends Mass or not.  Atheists or agnostics are so if they say they are, even if some believe in some notion of God.  Using self-report fits with the UN’s Declaration in 1948 that a person’s religion is what he/she says it is.

Who paid them to interview 35,000 people to find out this?  We didn’t know this already, just by driving through American cities, seeing the multiplicity of churches, some progressing, some with brand new buildings, some with grass growing in the parking lot, seeing new temples and mosques, also?

Turns out they have a little more than that to say.  They announce:
44% of American adults either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated to being affiliated, or reverse.

51% of Americans say they are Protestant.  This divides into:
26% evangelical Protestant
18% mainline Protestant
7% historically black Protestant
24% Catholic (31% of the total population were raised Catholic)

NOTE:  The foreign-born adult population are 46% Catholics, 24% Protestant.  The native-born Americans are 55% Protestant, 21% Catholic.

16% say they’re unaffiliated with any faith (double the number who say that was true in childhood).  This divides into:
1.6% atheist
2.4% agnostic
12% ‘nothing in particular’–this divides into:
6.3% because it’s not important to me
5.8% it’s important to me, but not affiliated with anything
(25% of Americans age 18-29 are unaffiliated with any religion
1.7% Mormon
1.7% Jew (Orthodox, Conservative or Reform)
.7% Jehovah’s Witness
.7% Buddhist (Theravada, Tibetan or Zen)
.6% Orthodox
.6% Muslim (Sunni or Shia)
.4% Hindu

Race distribution:
Blacks are most likely to report formal affiliation.  Even those unaffiliated are 3/4 ‘religious unaffiliated’.
Only 1/3 of Buddhists are Asian.  Most are white.
Latinos are now 1/3 of all Catholics:  1/8 of all Catholics age 70+, 45% of all Catholics age 18-29.
This is due to immigration.

Immigration:
General Social Surveys by National Opinion Research Center at University of Chicago since 1972 say the US adult population’s Catholic share has held fairly steady at around 25%, but 1/3 of the people who say they were raised Catholic have left–that means about 10% of America is former Catholic.  These losses have been overcome a little by the 2.6% who have changed affiliation TO Catholicism, but more by the many Catholic immigrants (many illegal from Latin America).
Also,
2/3 of all Muslims are foreign-born
80% of all Hindus are foreign-born
3/4 of all Buddhists are converts, only 1/3 are foreign-born.

Age distribution:
Age 70+:  62% Protestant, 8% non-affiliated
Age 18-29:  43% Protestant, 25% non-affiliated
Of the non-affliated, 31% are under 30, 71% are under 50.
Of the population, 20% are under 30, 59% are under 50.
About 50% of Jews, and about 50$ of mainline Protestants, are over 50.
41% of the population at large are over 50.

Sex distribution:
20% of men say they have no religious affiliation, 13% of women

Marriage distribution:
Among married people, 37% are married to spouse of another religious affiliation (this includes Protestants married to another Protestant of a different denominational family, such as Baptists married to Methodists).  Hindus (78%) and Mormons (71%) are most likely to be married, and to be married to someone of the same religion (90%, 83%, respectively).

Largest families:  20% of Mormons and 15% of Muslims have 3 or more children at home.

Regional distribution:
The Midwest most resembles the nation as a whole.
The South has the largest concentration of evangelical Protestants.
The Northeast has the greatest concentration of Catholics.
The West has the greatest concentration of unaffiliateds.

Education distribution:  post-graduate education is obtained by
Almost 1/2 of Hindus
1/3 of Jews
1/4 of Buddhists
1/10 of total adult population overall

Income distribution:
Hindus and Jews report higher income levels.

Retention rate:
Only 37% of people raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses still are in that faith.

Predominant Protestants:  Baptists are…
1/3 of all Protestants
almost 1/5 of the total population
almost 2/3 of historically black Protestant churches

The BBC had a report against Apostolic Christianity due to impressions British people had of Oneness Pentecost from the film, ‘Borat’.

Since media effect comes and goes in public consciousness as new things come up to hold attention, and because the UK is a religiously free society, I feel the UK is likely to pass a law against Oneness Pentecostalism specifically or against Pentecostalism generally, but, since the UK also loves order and bureaucratic red tape, they might well pass laws more closely scrutinizing:
a.  financial records of churches
b.  claims that churches cause psychological damage.

As an American who grew up in India under British influence, I am formed as much by Britain and India as by America.  As an apostolic Christian who holds to God’s love for humanity and his sacrifice as Jesus Christ for our sins, and having exprienced his Spirit’s presence in my life, I do want to see people in all three countries thrive Spiritually through God’s Spirit’s presence in their lives.

Having been for some weeks in the part of America where the segment was filmed and having spoken with people there about this, then having seen the segment of the film having to do with this, I have the following observations:

First, people filled with God’s Spirit worship God differently in different nations, states, even cities.  Apostolic churches in Britain aren’t necessarily the same as those in America, nor are all the churches in America the same, nor all the churches in Britain, nor even all the apostolic churches in London, as those of us who have visited more than one can attest.  And British people certainly has their own freedom to worship Jesus Christ as they please, as do Americans and, for that matter, Indians.  For instance, in Mizoram, NE India, apostolics dance in a circle during song services.  In South India, they usually sit on the floor.  In China, they even worship in Chinese!  And in secret because of government oppression.  Apostolics in Britain, America and India don’t do that because these are religiously free societies.’
2.  Remember ‘Borat’ is fiction–Cohen said he was providing a documentary, but it’s a movie.  ‘Borat’ is a fictional character.  It’s not more credible than ‘Braveheart’ showing medieval lowland Scots wearing paint and kilts.
3.  ‘Borat’ showed footage of one church service of one state in America,  and anecdotal examples are not exhaustive evidence of Pentecost as a whole, Oneness Pentecost as a whole, American Oneness Pentecost as a whole, or even that one state’s  practice generally.
4.  Cohen in his movie was good at faking his own conversion (and faking many things in the movie) and in deceiving honest, good, people who actually work for a living, but this is an indictment of him as being unreal and uncouth and untrustworthy, not them.’
5.  Also, ‘Cohen did not interview the people who actually received Spirit baptism, so the audience didn’t see what Pentecost is like on a day-to-day basis in people’s lives.  A ‘documentary’ not even interviewing people is not credible.’

Pakistan

The Pakistani government announced that Islam must be taught in all government-funded schools. The prime minister said, “”Pakistan was achieved to create a true Islamic society.”" Muslims have made use of a mandatory death sentence for “”disrespect to the Prophet”" to bring false charges against Christians.

Peru

One thousand buses in this South American nation carry “”Read the Bible”" signs by the Peruvian Bible Society. They have also printed these on the backs of one million bus tickets, and have distributed more than 200,000 Bibles, 200,000 Children’s Bible storybooks, and six million Scripture leaflets. Many of these were printed in other indigenous languages as well as in Spanish.

Sudan

Sudan will spend $100 million to spread Islam. Says Islamic ruler Lt. Gen. Omer Hassan el-Bashir, “”We will export Sudanese culture and values to the rest of the world.”" Fifty-five nations also in the Islamic Conference Organization are also backing this effort. Sudanese officials already impose Islamic law within Sudan by requiring all women, including nonMuslims, to wear a head scarf and a long robe or dress to cover their legs and arms. Also, all women entering Sudah, including tourists, who are not dressed accordingly, are provided with dresses and gowns. Most women in southern Sudan are Christian or animist and oppose this law.

Turkey

This is one of the most unreached nations in the world, with only about 1,000 evangelicals for sixty million people. Evangelical missionaries starting working in Istanbul in the 1960s, and today 400 foreign Christian workers live there. Turkey is 99.8% Islamic–many people feel that to be Turkish is to be Islamic. While Turkey officially grants freedom of religion, most Turkish Christians are harassed in their daily lives. Please pray for freedom in Turkey.

United Kingdom

200,000 people have enrolled in the ten-week Alpha courses, which introduce people to Christianity. The course begins with a meal and is follsed by talk about Christianity and small-grouyp discussions. Alpha graduates are taking their lively faith to declining congregations in England and so far have saved some churches from closing.

Venezuela

Evangelical churches have counded more than 3,500 congregations in the last five years, and evangelical growth has increased from 800,000 to 1.4 million. Evangelicals at a conference recently pledged to reach 15% of the population by 2015, and to start 15,000 churches. About 5.5% of the country’s 22 million people are evangelical.

A red cow named Melody chews a lot of grass in complete ignorance of the controversy she stirs up. She mainly worries about the flies. Melody, a red heifer, was born on an ordinary farm in northern Israel. Two millennia ago, the ashes of a red heifer, butchered in her third year, were mixed with water and used to purify Jews before they approach the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Now, many devout Jews greet red heifers as a wonderful sign that the Messiah is coming at the new millennium, and would like to burn Melody to cinders in a new, third, temple. Muslims and some less observant Jews fear that extremists might take Melody as a signal to destroy the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques to clear the ground for to construct a new temple–and start a war. Journalist David Landau in the newspaper Ha’aretz recommends that someone quickly and casually kill Melody (as if this were all her fault). In the 1980s, a few Jewish militants were arrested and convicted of plotting to blow up the two mosques. Gershom Solomon founded the Temple Mount Faithful Movement thirty years ago to promote the hill’s liberation from “Muslim imperialist forces.” His followers periodically challenge the Israeli government’s longstanding rule against Jewish prayer anywhere on the Temple Mount, apart from the Western, “Wailing” Wall. Solomon says Melody is “another sign that we are very close the rebuilding of the temple.” Landau says, “The potential harm from this heifer is far greater than the destructive properties of a regular terrorist bomb,” as if killing one would prevent others from being born.

And maybe that’s the answer. Melody’s not really red, just auburn. And she’s going prematurely gray–white whiskers in the snout and white hairs in the tail and eyelashes–perhaps a trauma among women bovine as much as it is for the human variety. Her local rabbi, Shmaria Shore, doesn’t think she’ll pass inspection: “I’m very doubtful whether she is kosher. If I really thought she was, I’d send her away to an undisclosed location.” Melody, if informed about this, probably wouldn’t at first know whether to feel relieved or insulted. Then she’d probably decide on relieved. As long as everybody else knows it, too. Then she’ll have a lot more days to worry about nothing except flies.

In the midst of all this tension, Israeli tourist officials want to attract hordes of Christian tourists two years from now to Megiddo (Greek name = Armageddon), where the Tribulation ends. The Israeli National Parks Authority approved a multimedia reconstruction of Armageddon on the site of its ruins so that visitors can “contemplate the final showdown with the aid of virtual reality,” as Kendall Hamilton, Joseph Contreras and Mark Dennis said in their article, “The Strange Case…,” in Newsweek. Unwise, soon-to-be virtual visitors, perhaps, attending a Last Battle Bash.

Many people are turning to traditional faiths, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. The current search to find God has never before been this wide or deep. Some people say the reasons for the interest are moral decay, financial disaster, and the emptiness of materialism. Islam has 1.1 billion followers worldwide and is growing rapidly: in 1950, one of every seven people on earth was Muslim; today, one in five. Christianity has 1.9 million adherents and has become a major religion outside the West.

Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing family of world Christianity. It has 410 million members and is, after Roman Catholicism, the second largest Christian tradition. It is also growing by 20 million a year, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Gaston Espinosa reports: Little Pentecostal templos and iglesias, often averaging only 60-100 members, are attracting 30,000-40,000 Latinos annually from Roman Catholicism. Their minister usually works in a factory. Many Pentecostals attend church every night for a two-hour service. Loud Bible readings and spontanesous testimonies are part of every service. The hymns usually fill with rhythmic clapping, accompanied by guitar, drums, tambourines, bass fiddle, piano. Their call to born again, Spirit-filled life has led to great conflict and persecution in families and neighborhoods, where other people mock them, calling them “Aleluyas.”

Today, Latin America has approximately 1 million Pentecostals in 10,000 congregations in 40 denominations or fellowship circles.

Because Pentecostals argue over almost any subject from prohibitions on pork to the correct doctrine on the Trinity, today there are 11,000 Pentecostal or charismatic denominations worldwide.