An excellent summary of a more disturbing trend over at www.christianitytoday.com

It has not been that long ago since the online editor was praising her nightly ritual of watching sitcoms and going to bed with Jay and Dave in her editorial section at the start of the weekly Christianity Today updates. I wrote a nice email asking if she was serious or just being hyperbolous for effect. I am still waiting on a reply.

Click below and see the excellent synopsis.

Sex and the CT « The Shepherd’s Scrapbook

Sex and the CT

Here’s an update on the Sex and the City and Christianity Today movie review ordeal…

Sex and the City was an HBO television series (1998-2004) that won 7 Emmy Awards.

The SATC movie (rated R) was released on May 30 with more of the same, what the Chicago Tribune labels “outré fashion, casual sex and dubious cocktails” and “plenty of eye candy for the ladies (think naked men and haute couture).” Not your typical Christian movie.

However, Christianity Today’s Camerin Courtney wrote a fairly explicit and positive review, giving SATC 3 stars (CT gave Prince Caspian 2.5 stars).

People criticized CT for positively reviewing a “pornographic movie.”

Carolyn McCulley (a CT contributor herself) writes an exceptional response to the CT review: “the pot with the proverbial frog has boiled over. The changes that have come about with the introduction of ’sex positive’ or ‘porn positive’ third-wave feminism, beginning in the early 1990s, have now so thoroughly permeated our culture that even evangelicals fail to see the trend or the danger.”

CT responded to the swarm of criticism by defending the original review.

Then yesterday Ted Slater of Boundless called CT to *repent* over the review (and the defense of the review) in an article simply titled “Christianity Today Relishes Sexual Perversion.”

Baptist Press – Prof withdraws from ethics society for its ‘honoring sin’
Prof withdraws from ethics society for its ‘honoring sin’

Posted on Jun 18, 2008 | by Lauren Crane

WAKE FOREST, N.C. (BP)–Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary ethics professor Daniel Heimbach has withdrawn his membership from the Society of Christian Ethics after the group took a stand in what he calls “honoring sin over Scripture” regarding homosexuality.

Heimbach said new guidelines soon to be adopted by the society will make it impossible for any member to remain in good standing who does not affirm homosexuality. After 24 years of membership in the Society of Christian Ethics, Heimbach said the group has now gone so far in its view and defense of homosexuality as to disqualify members who defend and apply biblical morality.

The membership of the group now totals more than 1,000 people from the United States, Canada and Europe. According to its website, the group aims to “promote scholarly work in Christian ethics and in the relation of Christian ethics to other traditions of ethics … and to provide a community of discourse and debate for those engaged professionally within these general fields.”

While Heimbach said he has remained a member of the group to be a “beacon in the darkening circumstances,” the time has come for him to withdraw his membership.

“The reason I am withdrawing now, and not before, is that only now is the SCE adopting ‘standards of professional conduct’ that go so far as to disqualify membership based on defending and applying biblical morality,” Heimbach said, in reference to the amendments made to the Standards of Professional Conduct. They will be voted on in January 2009.

“It is ironic that, having assiduously avoided favoring any one moral understanding over others for nearly 50 years, the SCE should now see no problem with enforcing one view over others by conditioning membership on presuming to accept the moral legitimacy (requiring all to actually ‘respect’ and ‘honor’) of self-justified character and behavior God declares to be categorically wicked,” Heimbach said.
Technorati Tags: homosexuality sbc ethics

Dangers of Cohabitation | PreachingToday.com
In a 2007 edition of the New Oxford Review, Dr. A. Patrick Schneider II, who holds boards in family and geriatric medicine and runs a private practice in Lexington, Kentucky, did a statistical analysis of cohabitation in America, based on the findings of a number of academic resources. Here are five conclusions Schneider draws from his studies:

1. Relationships are unstable in cohabitation. One-sixth of cohabiting couples stay together for only three years; one in ten survives five or more years.

2. Cohabiting women often end up with the responsibilities of marriage—particularly when it comes to caring for children—without the legal protection. Research has also found that cohabiting women contribute more than 70 percent of the relationship’s income.

3. Cohabitation brings a greater risk of sexually transmitted diseases, because cohabiting men are four times more likely to be unfaithful than husbands.

4. Poverty rates are higher among cohabitors. Those who share a home but never marry have 78 percent less wealth than the continuously married.

5. Those who suffer most from cohabitation are the children. The poverty rate among children of cohabiting couples is fivefold greater than the rate among children in married-couple households. Children ages 12–17 with cohabiting parents are six times more likely to exhibit emotional and behavioral problems and 122 percent more likely to be expelled from school.

Brian Lowery, associate editor, PreachingToday.com; source: A. Patrick Schneider II, “Cohabitation is bad for men, worse for women, and horrible for children,” www.lifesite.net (10-4-07), reprinted from an original article in the New Oxford Review

Cyber Sexuality – Newsletter – ChristianityTodayLibrary.com

Cyber Sexuality
Maintaining real purity in a virtual world.
Rich Tatum

posted August 29, 2007

I recently received an e-mail from a friend. She wrote:

Do you know of any Christian articles dealing with internet flirting or cybersex? I can’t seem to find anything I can relate to, and I know there must be other folks who’ve encountered the same thing.

Indeed. A search for cybersex within the CT Library archives turns up over 40 articles that cover the struggle with and against various forms of sexual sin online. But this issue also falls under other categories for which some very useful articles have been written.

Maxwell’s Guidelines on Sexual Temptation

Good, sage advice from John Maxwell

What’s an ‘AWOL machine’? – CWN

What’s an ‘AWOL machine’?

By Rev. Mark H. Creech

While attending the annual convention of the American Council on Alcohol Problems (ACAP) in September of last year, Dan Ireland, president of that organization, came up to me and asked: “Mark, when are you folks in North Carolina going to do something about those AWOL machines being marketed out of Greensboro.” My response was one of complete surprise, responding: “What’s an AWOL machine?” That’s when Ireland educated me about one of the newest and worst forms of alcohol abuse, I believe, ever known to man.

AWOL stands for “Alcohol Without Liquid” — a device consisting of an oxygen generator and a hand-held vaporizer into which the user pours his or her favorite alcoholic beverage. The device produces a mist of alcohol inhaled through the mouth, allowing the alcohol to enter the bloodstream through the lungs and traveling straight to the brain. Many medical experts say the machines, marketed as “the ultimate party toy,” produce a quick and intense high off alcohol.

Some have gone so far as to say AWOL is to drinking what smoking crack is to snorting cocaine. Teresa A. Barton, interim executive director of the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy, said the devices have “no purpose other than to get you drunk.” [1]

Baptist Press – Flood of pornography breaching the church – News with a Christian Perspective

Flood of pornography breaching the church

Posted on Jul 6, 2007 | by Jerry Pierce/Southern Baptist TEXAN

GRAPEVINE, Texas (BP)–Divorce lawyers are noting its increasing influence.

In Great Britain, it’s blamed for a 20 percent jump in sexual assaults perpetrated by kids as young as 11.

New Jersey says 141 sex offenders used MySpace | U.S. | Reuters

We must ever be on guard. How can parents let children be so alone online.

Gray Matters: Five Principles of Discernment, Part 1 and http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001495.cfm

Interesting articles… Very interesting.

E-Mail Newsletters

By Douglas W. Phillips April 17, 2007 Today, the nation mourns the senseless murder of thirty-two men and women who were gunned down in cold blood. The slaughter of students at Virginia Tech constitutes the largest campus killing spree in American history. The murderer was a fellow student, twenty-three-year-old Cho Seung-hui of South Korea. Though little is currently known of his motive behind the murders, it is clear that his plan was calculated and carefully executed. The assault was premeditated and thorough. Doctors report that not a single victim had fewer than three bullet wounds. Thousands will be deeply affected, probably for the rest of their lives. The most serious pains belong to the mothers, fathers, and sisters and brothers of the murdered victims. What shall we say to them? What are we to learn from these events? First, we must remember the answer to the question “why?”

April+2007+-+Guarding+Our+Daughters’+Moral+Purity
Guarding Our Daughters’ Moral Purity
A nervous father interviews his daughter’s date.
by Dennis Rainey
I was seated at my desk, barely able to concentrate. I shifted papers, opened drawers, glanced out the window. Shifted papers, opened drawers, glanced out the window. Shifted papers … I felt like I was expecting an important phone call and was just trying to do something, anything, productive while waiting. But it wasn’t working.

Neither was I.

April+2007+-+Battling+Lust
Battling Lust
Guys and girls struggle in different ways, but each can help the other in the daily fight.
by Joshua Harris
A major misconception about men is that their problem with lust is much worse and more serious than any woman’s could be. In other words, that men are monsters while women are innocent and pure.

Ray Comfort’s Column

Natural Made Killers – By Ray Comfort After the Columbine school massacre of thirteen people, Leonardo DiCaprio solemnly vowed never to star in another violent movie. Just after the violent murders, the U.K. Mirror reported:

College students think they’re so special – Mental Health – MSNBC.com

College students think they’re so special Study finds alarming rise in narcissism, self-centeredness in ‘Generation Me’

High Stakes – LeadershipJournal.net

High Stakes With internet wagers unregulated, gambling is on the rise and closer to home. How will we help the hooked and persuade the unconvinced? by Abram Book Jeanne* was trapped. Her social outings to the nearby casino had grown into an addiction to slot machines and video poker. “I’m hooked, and I could be facing bankruptcy,” the 59-year-old grandmother told her pastor. Gulfport wasn’t a casino town when Dean Register accepted the call to pastor First Baptist Church. But soon after he moved there, Mississippi voted to allow casino boats, and the three coastal counties were soon transformed into a seaside Las Vegas, minus the showgirls. Knowing the pain legalized gambling would cause in his community and his congregation, Register fought approval.