By L.A. Williams, Correspondent
Christian Action League of North Carolina
December 31, 2008

RALEIGH - Unless North Carolinians speak out at a series of public hearings this month, they may soon lose the freedom of a Sunday walk in the woods as the Lord’s Day becomes hunters’ prey.

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, which seems to have the state’s 139-year-old Sunday hunting ban in its crosshairs, has proposed rule changes that would allow falconry, bow hunting and crossbow hunting on Sunday.

“We agree with the North Carolina Family Policy Council that this proposal is just ‘the camel’s nose under the tent,’” said the Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina. “Once the door is opened to one kind of hunting on Sunday, the rest won’t be far behind.”

Like the majority of North Carolina residents, the Christian Action League stands staunchly behind citizens’ right to hunt six days a week, but not on Sunday.  Read the rest of this entry »

Christian organization says it’s financially in the red
Christian Action League of North Carolina

In his December newsletter, Dr. James Dobson announced that Focus on the Family was cutting more than 200 members of their staff and eliminating 53 positions from their budget that were not filled. He said the nations’ economic downturn had resulted in a mounting deficit of $5 million in the ministry’s last fiscal year.

Renowned pollster George Barna recently reported surveys had found more than 150 million adults had been negatively affected by the nation’s current financial crisis, and churches, as well as nonprofits, he said, could expect to be hit especially hard. According to Barna’s findings, one out of every 5 households had decreased its giving to churches or other religious centers.

“We’re certainly feeling the pinch at the Christian Action League,” said Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the state-level public-policy organization. Creech said the League had waged a costly fight against some egregious forms of legislation that would have passed in the last session of the North Carolina General Assembly. “We were certain our constituents would have wanted us to put up a vigorous fight and would help us replenish the funds relatively fast,” he said. “But none of us could have anticipated that close on the heels of these expenditures would come a deep recession.”

Currently, the Christian Action League (CAL) is more than $15,000 in the red. Read the rest of this entry »

“It is supremely fitting that every man should approach the infant Jesus upon his knees.”
By Rev. Mark H. Creech
Christian Action League of North Carolina

In Bethlehem, the Church of the Nativity originally built by the Christian Emperor Constantine during the fourth century is located above a cave that legend holds is the place of Christ’s birth. It’s impossible to know whether the spot truly is where the Virgin Mary delivered the Son of God. Nevertheless, one interesting fact about the Church is that all pilgrims who venture to see the supposed place where the holy child was laid in a manger must first enter through The Door of Humility.

The Door of Humility is a small rectangular entrance that was created during Ottoman times to prevent carts from being driven in by looters, and to force even the most prominent of visitors to dismount from their horses before entering. Famed Bible commentator William Barclay once noted of the door: “There is something beautiful in the symbolism that the church where the cave is has a door so low that all must stoop to enter. It is supremely fitting that every man should approach the infant Jesus upon his knees.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Alysse ElHage
North Carolina Family Policy Council

With roughly 9,000 public libraries and just over 82,000 public school libraries in the United States, American citizens of every age have the freedom to access a wealth of information and perspectives, mainly free of charge and without restriction. But what happens when unencumbered intellectual freedom threatens to steal the innocence of childhood and/or invade the domain of family values? At what point should the “right to read” be curtailed to protect children from objectionable material and the rights of their parents to direct their upbringing? The American Library Association’s answers to these questions should alarm parents about the safety of libraries in their communities. Read the rest of this policy paper (requires Adobe reader).

Christian Action League

The Joint Legislative Program Evaluation Oversight Committee heard a report from the Program Evaluation Division (PED) of the North Carolina General Assembly on Wednesday. The report evaluated the effectiveness of North Carolina’s Alcoholic Beverage Commission system both to identify inefficiencies and improvement options.

According to a summary statement provided by the PED, the study “examined how North Carolina’s ABC system functions, focusing on the operation of the 158 local boards.”

The study reported on four essential findings:

• North Carolina’s ABC system has not kept pace with demographic and economic changes in the state.
• State statutes limit the ability of the North Carolina ABC Commission to effectively and efficiently manage the ABC system.
• Unlike other control states, North Carolina has not clearly defined the mission of local boards in state statutes or administrative rules.
• North Carolina has a different system for regulating the sale of liquor than many other states.

Carol Shaw, who delivered the report on behalf of the PED, noted that North Carolina is one of 18 states nationwide with a control ABC system and the system was in need of modernizing.   Read the rest of this entry »

By L.A. Williams, Correspondent
Christian Action League

As Christians in America prepare to celebrate the birth of their Savior, many may find themselves having to fight for their right to do so in a country that was founded on religious freedom.

“The secularists push continues to remove any and all Christian references from our society,” said the Rev. Mark Creech. “And every time we allow it, we add momentum to their movement and give away our most fundamental right to freely exercise our faith.”

A handful of recent incidents illustrate the point:

Christmas trees are banned from University of North Carolina libraries; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has come under attack for her favorable remarks on faith during the Capitol tree lighting; and just in time for the holidays an activist judge in South Carolina halted the production of license plates that feature a cross and the words “I Believe.” We won’t even mention the fact that children in Wilmington nearly lost their right to sing “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” at a school program because of a complaint that the song included the words “Christmas” and “Santa.”  Read the rest of this entry »

By Tim Wilkins
Cross Ministry

While eHarmony - the multimillion dollar matchmaking enterprise - tries to dodge criticism for vowing to launch a gay dating site in response to a lawsuit filed by a gay man, some national headlines are playing to eHarmony’s “ethical dilemma.”

How so?

eHarmony and its founder Neal Clark Warren have built their behemoth on Christian values - only matching men and women since 2000.  Their past honorable endeavors make their recent decision to capitulate puzzling - to say the least.

What is as puzzling are some of the headlines announcing eHarmony’s decision - as if eHarmony was caught between a rock and a hard place.  Some of those headlines read:

Lawsuit Forces eHarmony To Match Homosexual Couples
eHarmony Forced To Match Homosexual Couples
Dating Firm Forced To Include Gays
eHarmony Forced To Offer Same-Sex Dating

Now hold on there!  eHarmony was not forced to do any such thing.  To be clear, eHarmony was forced to respond to a lawsuit.  They were forced to give depositions, but eHarmony has not been forced to “match homosexual couples” nor “offer same-sex dating.”  Read the rest of this entry »

By Tom Strode
Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission

Another Planned Parenthood employee has been caught on video tape trying to cover up alleged child sexual abuse.

The unidentified nurse at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bloomington, Ind., is shown via an undercover video camera telling a girl who identified herself as a 13 year old impregnated by a 31-year-old man that she will not file a report, though it is required by state law. Later on in the video, the nurse informs her how to avoid Indiana’s parental consent law and gives her the name and location of an Illinois abortion clinic where it will be easier to avoid notifying her parents, according to The Washington Times.

The 13 year old, who calls herself “Brianna” on the secretly recorded video, is actually Lila Rose, a 20-year-old student at UCLA and president of the pro-life organization Live Action. In 2007, Rose posed as a minor and gained video footage of a similar cover-up at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Los Angeles.  Read the rest of this entry »

“Turning the focus of Christmas away from greed-feeding shopping frenzies and toward the kind of giving that changes lives.”

By L.A. Williams, Correspondent
Christian Action League

RALEIGH - Twinkling lights, inflatable snowmen, electronic lawn deer and a growing pile of packages around a stressed out and overspent family… is it beginning to look a lot like Christmas at your house?

The season of Advent, once a time of hope and expectation and a call to prepare our hearts to welcome the Savior of the world, has become a contest of consumerism in which Americans are the biggest winners and therefore the most pitiable losers, missing out on the very message that the Christ child came to proclaim.

“We are told in Luke 16:13 that we ‘cannot serve God and mammon’ and yet here, at a holiday meant to celebrate the very One we serve, we get caught up in buying all this stuff that not only do we not need, but that is truly a burden as it drives us deeper into debt,” said the Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina. “I’m not saying that we shouldn’t shop at all, but people need to know it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, it shouldn’t be this way.”

Overspending has put total U.S. consumer debt, not including mortgage debt, at more than $2.55 trillion, according to The Nilson Report. More than a little of that red ink can be blamed on crazed Christmas buying as Americans spend about $450 billion each year on holiday shopping.

This year, the transformation of typically rational people into unconscionably rabid consumers drew national attention with the Black Friday stampede that killed a Wal-mart worker in New York. But even before the fatal incident there has been a steadily growing movement among many in the faith community to turn the focus of Christmas away from greed-feeding shopping frenzies and toward the kind of giving that changes lives. Read the rest of this entry »

North Carolina Family Policy Council

Seeing the Hispanic population as a largely untapped resource for lottery ticket sales, the North Carolina Lottery Commission is exploring ways to get around a law which directs that “No [lottery] advertising may intentionally target specific groups or economic classes.” In short, the lottery wants to tap into Hispanic markets more by promoting state-sponsored gambling on Spanish-speaking radio and television. The lottery advertising law, however, has created a seemingly inconvenient roadblock that lottery officials are trying to work around. Ultimately, during a meeting on December 3, the State Lottery Commission instructed staff to look into the matter and come back to the Commission with a recommendation that would allow legal Spanish-language advertising. Read the rest of this entry »