The Captain and the Coach talk about faith in God

The Idaho affiliate of the American Family Association

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Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Bryan Fischer, Executive Director

For a printer-friendly version of today’s Update, please visit our website, Idaho Values Alliance.

PROFILE OF CHAMPIONS BREAKFAST – THE CAPTAIN AND THE COACH

I had the privilege this morning of attending the “Profiles of Champions” breakfast at the Western Idaho Fairgrounds, sponsored by my good friend Jon Strain and his organization, Search Ministries, with PGA touring pro Tom Lehman and Boise State head football coach Chris Peterson as the featured speakers.

Lehman won the 1995 British Open and was the captain of the 2006 Ryder Cup team. And of course Peterson’s story is well-known to football fans all over the country, as he led BSU to an undefeated 13-0 record in his first season as a head coach and to a heart-stopping victory over the University of Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl.

Both the Captain and the Coach talked about the ingredients of success, and the things that separate merely talented athletes and teams from winning athletes and teams. Each stressed the importance of character, integrity, humility, commitment, personal accountability, perseverance, and a dedication to excellence. The goal of the BSU football team, in preparing for success on the field, is “to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”

Both men spoke openly about the important role faith in God has played in their lives. For Lehman, the turning point in his life came in his sophomore year in high school, when a sense of emptiness and a feeling of insignificance led him to a decision to place his faith in Christ and make God a central part of everything he did in life, and to make every decision based on the standards found in the Scriptures.

He related a personal story from just last fall in which God reminded him, “Don’t do anything in my name if your motives are not right,” in connection with an event in which he used compassion for a grieving family as a way of wriggling out of a commitment he didn’t want to keep.

For Coach Peterson, health crises in the life of his two young sons rekindled his slumbering faith, as he gravitated toward God for the strength to do what he could not do without divine help. These crises helped him to open lines of communication with God, to focus on what is truly important in life, and to make God, family, and football his priorities, and in that order. “God,” he says, “has placed me on the blue turf to challenge me to become a better person,” as the pressures of coaching remind him of his continual need for God’s help to be the kind of coach he desires to be - under control and poised, and a mentor and example to young men.

This breakfast serves as a reminder of the central role faith in God plays in the life of so many public figures, as it has in all of American history, and is a reminder of the rich blessing of religious liberty that still flourishes in America despite the efforts of the secular left to choke it out.

For more information about Search:

Search-Boise.org

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BONUS BYTES

Ø John Lott, in today’s Wall Street Journal, rehearses the damage the Roe v. Wade decision did to American society. Although abortion was legal in a number of states prior to 1973, Roe immediately doubled the rate of abortions per live births, produced a sharp increase in pre-marital sex, out-of-wedlock births, a drop in the number of children placed for adoption (abortion replaced adoption as the preferred choice in an unplanned pregnancy), and a decline in marriages that occur after a woman becomes pregnant. In 1969, just 5% of all births were out of wedlock, while today the overall figure is close to 40%, and the rate is almost 70% in the black community. Thus a tragic number of children are growing up in America today with a missing mother or father, and poor blacks have suffered the most from these changes. Abortion is not only wrong, it weakens the family, America’s social fabric, and damages vulnerable young children fortunate enough to actually be born. (OpinionJournal - It's Not Enough to Be 'Wanted' )

Ø Alan Sears, head of the Alliance Defense Fund, reminds us that the ACLU has never abandoned the principles of its founder, Roger Baldwin, who was a self-professed fan of Soviet communism and Joseph Stalin. The ACLU is now busily at work trying to import Cuban-style communism into school libraries in south Florida, through a book, Vamos a Cuba, which presents a wholly imaginary portrait of life there. Predictably, the book contains no mention of the fact that questioning the Cuban government is likely to lead to imprisonment, that most Cubans can’t afford milk, that access to the Internet is severely limited and closely monitored by the government, and that poets and journalists have been sent to prison for 20 years for failing to heap praise on their leaders. The ACLU is determined to make it a constitutional right for school children to be fed misinformation and lies about the wonders of communism. Yet the ACLU at the same time screeches about classroom presentations of intelligent design or criticisms of homosexual behavior. As always, the ACLU’s allegiance to free speech principles is dangerously and ruinously subjective. (Townhall.com::The ACLU Never Forgets Its Pro-Communist Roots::By Alan Sears)

Ø As an example of the ACLU’s selectivity, look no further than the University of Michigan-Dearborn, where Muslim leaders have decided to let taxpayers pay for two footbaths for Muslim students to use in preparing themselves ritually for prayer. The ACLU, which seems to find violations of the establishment clause only when Christians are exercising religious liberty, is turning a blind eye, giving the Muslim community no reason to raise private funds for the project. The ACLU justifies its passivity on the ludicrous ground that the project is not in fact “an attempt to make it easier for Muslims to pray,” and that, “There’s no intent to promote religion.” (Muslims won't fund footbaths)

Ø Meanwhile, the ACLU is blissfully unconcerned that a campus supervisor at a Minnesota high school will likely be terminated on Monday, despite a petition of support signed by 500 parents, students, and patrons. His fireable offense? Talking with students about traditional values and abstinence – on his own time, off campus, and with parental consent. The deputy director of the Minnesota School Boards Association insists that school boards may control the off-campus behavior of their employees, which places them in violation of a teacher’s right to freedom of speech, religion, and association, just for starters. So the left insists that a teacher cannot be fired for off-campus sexual conduct with a consenting adult, but must be fired for off-campus counseling that students want and parents like. (Star-Tribune: Role as religious mentor may lead to staffer's firing)

Ø The ACLU is also blissfully unconcerned about another high school teacher who has been reprimanded for inviting a guest speaker to talk to his elective class, “The Bible in History,” about, well, the Bible in history. The speaker talked about his personal experience in Egypt of suffering punishment at the hands of the government for his adherence to the Bible, and suggested that students might want to think long and hard before they accept the old media’s view that Islam is a “religion of peace.” Incongruously, a so-called legal expert has criticized the teacher for not making sure the First Amendment was upheld in his classroom (wait, that’s the one that talks about free speech, isn’t it?). As a parent correctly observed, “Are we going to be open to a variety of different perspectives versus are we going to limit and censor and shut down the educational experience and environment to keep out people with certain views?” The teacher was suspended, presented with a 12-page reprimand, forbidden to come on campus, and prohibited from talking with any student, school system employee, or member of the media, and was given a “horrendous” end-of-the-year review. All of course, in the interest of protecting the First Amendment. (newsobserver.com | Teacher fights on in flap over anti-Islam speaker)

Ø Speaking of Islam as a religion of peace, word is now filtering out of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip that Christians will only be allowed to continue living safely there if they accept Islamic sharia law. Said a Hamas leader, “[Christians] must be ready for Islamic rule if they want to live in peace in Gaza.” Any Christian who engages in “missionary activity” will be “dealt with harshly.” A church and Christian school were attacked in Gaza earlier this week, with gunmen destroying crosses, Bibles, pictures of Jesus, and furniture and equipment. A U.N. school in Gaza was attacked last month, resulting in one fatality, because it allowed boys and girls to participate in the same sporting event. Two months ago, a Christian bookstore in Gaza and two nearby Internet cafes were bombed. The Hamas chief, citing Prince Charles for support, said, “The West must learn from Islam how to bring children up properly and to teach them the right values.” (WorldNetDaily: Christians warned: Accept Islamic law)

Ø In a setback for marriage and the family, a Vermont judge has granted visitation rights to a woman’s former lesbian partner who has no biological relationship with the child. The child’s mother formed a civil union with her partner, then conceived the child through artificial insemination. The mother subsequently converted to Christianity and left the homosexual lifestyle (proof, by the way, that changing one’s sexual orientation is possible) and moved to Virginia. (FOXNews.com - Vermont Judge Dissolves Lesbian Civil Union, Awards Custody of Child - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News)

Ø Illegal aliens are now intentionally setting fires along our southern border to burn agents out of observation posts and patrol routes, creating diversions to gain undetected access to the U.S. The fires have destroyed valuable natural and cultural resources in national forests, precipitating a sudden surge in anti-illegal sentiment among rabid environmentalists. (Okay, I made that last part up.) Armed smugglers of both aliens and drugs have walked right through the middle of active firefighting operations, requiring firefighters to be escorted by armed law enforcement officers. Direct assaults on Border Patrol agents are up more than 100 percent over last year. According to a Forest Service supervisor, law enforcement personnel have been assaulted, threatened with weapons, shot at, been targeted with grapefruit-sized rocks wrapped in rags, dipped in gasoline, and set on fire, and had their vehicles rammed by cross-border violators. (Illegals using fire to clear border - The Washington Times)

Ø As a sign of the virtual collapse of the Episcopalian church as a distinctly Christian denomination, a longtime female priest says she became a Muslim a year ago. She now worships at a mosque on Fridays and dons her white collar on Sundays. She says, “I am both Muslim and Christian...I’m 100 percent both,” managing in one breathtaking phrase to transgress the teaching of both religions at once. Christians, of course, consider Jesus Christ to be the son of God, while Muslims insist, often in banners on display outside mosques, that “Allah has no son.” She will begin teaching the New Testament, or at least her version of it, this fall at Seattle University, a Catholic school. Her bishop thinks that “the interfaith possibilities are exciting,” while the leader of her mosque says, regarding being both Muslim and Christian, “I don’t know how that works.” (WorldNetDaily: Priest goes Muslim, but remains Christian)

Ø According to ABC, a newly trained team of suicide bombers, after going through graduation ceremonies from terrorist school on June 9, has been sent to the United States to blow people and things up. ABC’s website even includes a picture of the team assigned to kill civilians on our shores. The following link contains video and stills of the graduation ceremony. Richard Clarke, a hero of the left as President Clinton’s counterterrorism specialist, takes the threat seriously. “It doesn’t take too many who are willing to actually do it and be able to slip through the net and get into the United States or England and cause a lot of damage.” Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate continues to press hard to provide amnesty and legal residency for any and all illegals who can convince authorities they were here before January 1. The Blotter: Exclusive: Suicide Bomb Teams Sent to U.S., Europe

Ø Further data point on whether Islam is a religion of peace: the Muslim world may burst into flames this week because England has granted knighthood to Salman Rushdie, the author of the book, The Satanic Verses, the publication of which 18 years ago led to fatwas calling on Muslims to kill him. Those death threats have been renewed, and effigies of the Queen and the author have already been burned by students in Pakistan, while one hundred of them chanted “Kill him! Kill him!” Rushdie now requires round-the-clock police protection any time he is in Britain. Estimates are that Britain has already spent close to $20 million on security for him since 1989. Pakistan’s national assembly unanimously passed a resolution condemning Rushdie’s knighthood, and a Muslim group has offered a reward of $150,000 to Rushdie’s assassin. Said the group’s leader, “We will bestow kisses on the hands of whomsoever is able to execute this apostate.” Said Pakistan’s religious affairs minister, “If someone exploded a bomb on his body he would be right to do so, unless the British government apologises and withdraws the ‘sir’ title.” Naturally, voices on the left blamed England for this “provocative” decision. (Rushdie: The furore grows over his knighthood | the Daily Mail; Muslim world inflamed by Rushdie knighthood - TimesOnline)

Ø Now that Durham prosecutor Mike Nifong has been disbarred, Thomas Sowell wonders when criticism will be leveled at his accomplices. They include the New York Times, which made the initial charges a front page story while relegating news of Nifong’s disbarment to page 16; the 88 Duke University faculty members who joined the lynch mob by taking out an ad denouncing the lacrosse players; and the Duke University administration, which got rid of the lacrosse coach and canceled the team’s season, without a shred of evidence. For all of them, Sowell says, “This case served their purposes. That trumped any question about whether the charges were true or not.” He concludes, “That such attitudes and such atmospheres are not peculiar to Duke University, but are common on elite college campuses from coast to coast is a time bomb with the potential to destroy individuals and ultimately undermine the whole society.” (Townhall.com::Unfinished Business::By Thomas Sowell)

Ø Environmental scientist Bob Carter says there are three problems with the human-causation theory of global warming. First, the U.N.’s own figures show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998, despite an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere over that time of 15 parts per million. Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which CO2 has increased by 17 percent. Third, solar studies indicate that this current period of temperature stasis is likely to be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades. Political figures who argue for human-caused warming “are clearly being deceived.” (High price for load of hot air | The Courier-Mail)

Ø The father of scientific climatology, Reid Bryson, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, chimes in that global warming is “a bunch of hooey.” Bryson, who has worked in the field for 50 years, says there is “no credible evidence that (global warming) is due to mankind and carbon dioxide.” The motive for global warming theorists is simple, he says: money. “There is a lot of money to be made in this. If you want to be an eminent scientist you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can’t get grants unless you say, ‘Oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide.’” He adds, “There is very little truth to what is being said and an awful lot of religion. It’s almost a religion.” He hasn’t seen Al Gore’s movie. “Don’t make me throw up,” he says. “It is not science. It is not true.” (The Capital Times: Local scientist calls global warming theory 'hooey')

Ø For pictures of official U.S. Weather Service temperature monitoring stations, click on the following link. You will see them located within a few feet of fans that exhaust hot air from air conditioners and transformers, at the end of jet runways, and within five feet of trash burning barrels. Global warming, anyone? (Watts Up With That?: weather_stations Archives) (Hat tip: Clayton Cramer)