Religion and General News

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The Florida Department of Education lowered the performance level standard on a state writing exam after only 27 percent of fourth graders passed, MyFoxOrlando reports.

The decision to lower the standard from a four to a three was made in an emergency conference call Tuesday. The test scores range from zero to six.

Fourth grade teachers say the test inadequately reflected their pupils' writing abilities. They say the main reason the students did poorly was the test question was too hard.

According to the Florida Department of Education, the prompt, or essay topic, for fourth graders in the state of Florida this year was, "Suppose you or someone else had a chance to ride a camel. Imagine what happens on this camel ride. Write a story about what happens on this camel ride."

Some teachers say the question was unfair, arguing it may be unrealistic to expect fourth-graders to know what a camel is.

"It was just a very poor prompt, when do we see camels in Central Florida," said Ann Egitto, a language arts teacher at Rock Lake Middle School according to MyFoxOrlando.

Lisa Wright, a teacher at Idyllwilde Elementary School, agrees. "A lot fourth graders in my school probably don't even know what a camel really is," she said according to MyFoxOrlando.

However, the Department of Education told MyFoxOrlando the question was extensively reviewed and well-received by about 1,500 students who were selected to take it during a field-testing period.

They admitted they could have done a better job communicating student expectations to teachers after lowering the passing grade.

Fox News

The sexual orientation of a new pastor in a Missouri church softball league has put his team on the bench.

Rev. James Semmelroth Darnell, the 27-year-old pastor of St. John United Church of Christ in Saint Clair, told FoxNews.com that pastors of three other churches in a local church softball league said their teams would no longer take the field against St. John after hearing rumors questioning Darnell’s sexuality. Rather than force the issue, St. John pulled out of the league.

“Three teams had issue with that and no longer wanted to play against our team since I am an out bisexual person,” Darnell told FoxNews.com. “And it’s surprising because I don’t even play, I have no affiliation with the league.”

Darnell, who joined the church in October after completing seminary in Washington, D.C., said he anticipated his sexuality might lead to “some difficulty” in the town 45 miles west of St. Louis, but had no idea it would ultimately cause his church to quit the softball league.

“It’s very different than that nation’s capital, but I certainly didn’t expect this,” he said. “I don’t feel that anyone’s sexual orientation has anything to do with how they play softball or just to enjoy each other’s company during a game.”

Darnell said pastors at Bethel Baptist Church, Friendship Baptist Church and Liberty Baptist Church did not want their respective teams to compete against the team from Darnell’s church.

The Rev. Ben Kingston, pastor of Bethel Baptist Church, could not be reached for comment, but he confirmed the news to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch while behind the plate during a game on Tuesday.

“We believe that God’s word speaks clearly about boundaries, and that lifestyle is outside of those boundaries,” Kingston told the newspaper.

Darnell, for his part, said his sexuality will not affect his ability to lead his congregation off the field.

“I don’t think it will, because I’ve been able to go about doing the work of a pastor,” he said. “If it’s a distraction from that, we want to take a stand and say, ‘This shouldn’t be happening in this day and age.’”

(Reuters) - An appeals court on Wednesday revived a Florida teacher's lawsuit against a Christian school that fired her after she admitted to conceiving a child before her marriage.

Overturning a lower court ruling in the school's favor, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit found that Jarretta Hamilton was entitled to a trial on her claims of pregnancy discrimination by the Southland Christian School in St. Cloud, Florida.

The fourth-grade teacher informed administrators in April 2009 that she was pregnant and needed to take maternity leave. During the conversation, she admitted that she had conceived the child three weeks before her February wedding.

The school fired her a week later. Administrator John Ennis explained that "there are consequences for disobeying the word of God," according to the court opinion.

Hamilton sued the school in 2010 under a federal law that bars discrimination based on pregnancy, seeking compensation for lost wages and emotional distress.

A federal district court ruled in the school's favor before a trial, finding that Hamilton failed to establish that she was fired for her pregnancy rather than moral concerns over her premarital sex.

The three-judge appeals panel disagreed.

The Atlanta-based court pointed to evidence that the school may have been more concerned about Hamilton's request for leave than about her admission to having premarital sex.

Ennis expressed concern over finding a replacement teacher, Hamilton testified.

"Hamilton has established a genuine issue of material fact about the reason that Southland fired her. The ultimate issue is one for a jury to decide," Judge Edward Carnes wrote for the unanimous panel, sending the case back to the lower court for a trial.

David Gibbs, a lawyer for Southland Christian School, said in a statement that he would vigorously defend the school's religious rights before the district court. Edward Gay, who represented Hamilton, was not immediately available for comment.

BEIJING, CHINA (Worthy News)– A church in Zou Gang, Feixi county, was illegally demolished last month by government-backed real estate developers, according to ChinaAid.

The congregation called for prayer following the sudden destruction of their 800 square-meter building.

As a result of economic expansion, the Zou Gang church site had been marked for demolition, so the church's board of deacons decided to cooperate with the Communist Party committee and the Xingang Industrial Park concerning their resettlement. However, last August, the church's electricity was unexpectedly cut and days later the developers began digging trenches around the church, isolating it from the surrounding traffic.

On April 27, more than 100 unidentifed members of a demolition crew began tearing down the church: some destroyed the main gate to the church compound, while others broke down the church staff door and forcefully removed several members on duty; the rest of the crew prevented parishoners from entering the church compound as it was bulldozed down.

In minutes, the church where 500 Christians had worshiped for more than a decade was illegally demolished.

CNN

Editor's note: Daniel A. Helminiak, who was ordained a priest in Rome, is a theologian, psychotherapist and author of “What the Bible Really Says about homosexuality" and books on contemporary spirituality. He is a professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Daniel A. Helminiak.

By Daniel A. Helminiak, Special to CNN

President Barack Obama’s support of same-sex marriage, like blood in the water, has conservative sharks circling for a kill. In a nation that touts separation of religion and government, religious-based arguments command this battle. Lurking beneath anti-gay forays, you inevitably find religion and, above all, the Bible.

We now face religious jingoism, the imposition of personal beliefs on the whole pluralistic society. Worse still, these beliefs are irrational, just a fiction of blind conviction. Nowhere does the Bible actually oppose homosexuality.

In the past 60 years, we have learned more about sex, by far, than in preceding millennia. Is it likely that an ancient people, who thought the male was the basic biological model and the world flat, understood homosexuality as we do today? Could they have even addressed the questions about homosexuality that we grapple with today? Of course not.

Hard evidence supports this commonsensical expectation. Taken on its own terms, read in the original languages, placed back into its historical context, the Bible is ho-hum on homosexuality, unless – as with heterosexuality – injustice and abuse are involved.

That, in fact, was the case among the Sodomites (Genesis 19), whose experience is frequently cited by modern anti-gay critics. The Sodomites wanted to rape the visitors whom Lot, the one just man in the city, welcomed in hospitality for the night.

The Bible itself is lucid on the sin of Sodom: pride, lack of concern for the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:48-49); hatred of strangers and cruelty to guests (Wisdom 19:13); arrogance (Sirach/Ecclesiaticus 16:8); evildoing, injustice, oppression of the widow and orphan (Isaiah 1:17); adultery (in those days, the use of another man’s property), and lying (Jeremiah 23:12).

But nowhere are same-sex acts named as the sin of Sodom. That intended gang rape only expressed the greater sin, condemned in the Bible from cover to cover: hatred, injustice, cruelty, lack of concern for others. Hence, Jesus says “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 19:19; Mark 12:31); and “By this will they know you are my disciples” (John 13:35).

How inverted these values have become! In the name of Jesus, evangelicals and Catholic bishops make sex the Christian litmus test and are willing to sacrifice the social safety net in return.

The longest biblical passage on male-male sex is Romans 1:26-27: "Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another."

The Greek term para physin has been translated unnatural; it should read atypical or unusual. In the technical sense, yes, the Stoic philosophers did use para physin to mean unnatural, but this term also had a widespread popular meaning. It is this latter meaning that informs Paul's writing. It carries no ethical condemnation.

Compare the passage on male-male sex to Romans 11:24. There, Paul applies the term para physin to God. God grafted the Gentiles into the Jewish people, a wild branch into a cultivated vine. Not your standard practice! An unusual thing to do — atypical, nothing more. The anti-gay "unnatural" hullabaloo rests on a mistranslation.

Besides, Paul used two other words to describe male-male sex: dishonorable (1:24, 26) and unseemly (1:27). But for Paul, neither carried ethical weight. In 2 Corinthians 6:8 and 11:21, Paul says that even he was held in dishonor — for preaching Christ. Clearly, these words merely indicate social disrepute, not truly unethical behavior.

In this passage Paul is referring to the ancient Jewish Law: Leviticus 18:22, the “abomination” of a man’s lying with another man. Paul sees male-male sex as an impurity, a taboo, uncleanness — in other words, “abomination.” Introducing this discussion in 1:24, he says so outright: "God gave them up … to impurity."

But Jesus taught lucidly that Jewish requirements for purity — varied cultural traditions — do not matter before God. What matters is purity of heart.

“It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles,” reads Matthew 15. “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

Or again, Jesus taught, “Everyone who looks at a women with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Jesus rejected the purity requirements of the Jewish Law.

In calling it unclean, Paul was not condemning male-male sex. He had terms to express condemnation. Before and after his section on sex, he used truly condemnatory terms: godless, evil, wicked or unjust, not to be done. But he never used ethical terms around that issue of sex.

As for marriage, again, the Bible is more liberal than we hear today. The Jewish patriarchs had many wives and concubines. David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, and Daniel and the palace master were probably lovers.

The Bible’s Song of Songs is a paean to romantic love with no mention of children or a married couple. Jesus never mentioned same-sex behaviors, although he did heal the “servant” — pais, a Greek term for male lover — of the Roman Centurion.

Paul discouraged marriage because he believed the world would soon end. Still, he encouraged people with sexual needs to marry, and he never linked sex and procreation.

Were God-given reason to prevail, rather than knee-jerk religion, we would not be having a heated debate over gay marriage. “Liberty and justice for all,” marvel at the diversity of creation, welcome for one another: these, alas, are true biblical values.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Daniel A. Helminiak.