1| Evangelical leaders pray for protection of the Trump family |WashTimes
“Pray for me. I pray for you,” Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told an audience of 700 evangelical leaders in Florida on Thursday. “This will be an election that will go down in the history books. For evangelicals, for Christians, for everybody of religion. This may be the most important election that our country has ever had. So go out and spread the word. And once I get in, I will do my thing that I do very well. And I figure it is probably, maybe the only way I’m going to get to heaven. So I better do a good job.”
2| About that Pew survey on politics and the pulpit: So what makes an issue POLITICAL? |GetReligion
Are Americans really hearing political issues from the pulpit?
Obviously, a pastor urging a congregation to vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or another candidate — that’s political. But according to Pew, only 14 percent of churchgoers “say they heard their clergy speak directly in support of or against a specific presidential candidate in the months leading up to the survey.”
Specific issues characterized as political by the Pew survey: Religious liberty. Homosexuality. Abortion. Immigration. The environment. Economic inequality.
Do U.S. politics have a patent on those issues? Or would any of those issues be considered relevant in a church setting outside the political realm — say, in a normal context of Bible study? If so, is it fair to label such topics simply as political issues? After all, these issues are clearly linked to centuries of Christian doctrine.
3| New Prenatal Genetic Testing Could Predict Your Baby |TIME
***The present and emerging prenatal-diagnosis technologies are going to provide a huge arena for Christian ethical reflection. It is possible to say “no” for some tests, especially ones where there is nothing positive that results from finding out the problem. For example, finding out that one’s child in the womb has Down syndrome does not lead to a reversal of the Syndrome. But, in 90% of the cases, it leads to abortion.
Without denying the wonderful advances in modern prenatal and neonatal medical care, perhaps it is time Christians begin to push back against the ever-increasing invasive nature of prenatal screening.
A woman I know did not have ultrasounds with her pregnancies. Well-meaning friends would ask, “What if the baby has Down Syndrome?”
She would respond, “Well, what if the baby does have Down Syndrome?”
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