Issues
The Christian Action Commission covers a host of issues. To the left you'll see several categories with related subtopics. Select the issue(s) you're interested in. Here you'll be able to read and even tell a friend about it.
Social Issues
Help Beat Hunger
By Lee Yancey
If you are looking for a way to make a difference in the fight against World Hunger, consider having a BEAT Hunger retreat at your church. BEAT Hunger is about Believers Everywhere Attacking Hunger in their communities and in the world. It’s about your group of believers entering into active warfare against the evil of world hunger. It’s about getting off the sidelines and making a difference in the high-stakes game of life or death. It’s about growing a passion for compassion – a compassion that is born out of a love for God, not pity.
Those who participate in a BEAT Hunger event will experience hunger over an extended time period (most will do a 24-hour period of fasting and prayer). Participants will also be involved in a service project such as delivering food to needy families or a homeless shelter. They will experience firsthand what Jesus …
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Tv Violence Linked to Real Thing
By Jimmy Porter
Both boys and girls who watch a lot of violence on television have a heightened risk of aggressive adult behavior including spouse abuse and criminal offenses, no matter how they act in childhood, a new study says.
The participants were interviewed at ages 6 to 9 and again in their early 20s, making the study one of the few to follow children into adulthood to gauge the long-term effects of televised violence.
The findings are presented in the March 2003 issue of the journal Developmental Psychology by psychologists L. Howell Huesmann and colleagues at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
Huesmann said televised violence suggests to children that aggression is appropriate in some situations, especially when used by charismatic heroes, and it erodes a natural aversion to violence.
He recommended parents restrict viewing of violent television and movies by young …
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You Give Them Something to Eat: World Hunger Emphasis
Making disciples involves leadership and Jesus worked very hard to instill leadership qualities into the twelve around Him. If you look back at Luke 8:51, Jesus allows Peter, John, and James to accompany Him as he brings a dead girl back to life. In Luke 9:1 ff, Jesus sends the twelve disciples out on a trial run and gets them some much needed experience. After Jesus is crucified, resurrected, and ascended into heaven, the disciples will have learned from this valuable experience of preaching and healing.
The natural result of Jesus’ work and the twelve disciples’ preaching and healing was that the crowds had started rumors all over the country. Herod the tetrarch was confused because he had recently had John the Baptist beheaded. Now some were saying that Jesus was John resurrected. Others thought Jesus was Elijah or one of the prophets.
As nightfall came, …
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Bad Health Helped Create a “Bad” Health Care System
The stress of paying for health insurance is enough to give you a heart attack. With rates and deductibles increasing, and coverage decreasing, Americans are crying out for the broken health care system to be mended — but it’s not just America. Health care is a concern shared by every other country in the world. Canada, often cited as a shining example of a universal health care system, is plagued with long waiting times for operations, limited access to modern technology, and doctors scurrying to leave the country. Thirty years of government intervention has not fixed their health care problem.
Seventy percent of Americans believe the U.S. health care system is in a state of crisis or at least has major problems, according to Gallup pollsters. The Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a survey in June 2005 and found that over twice as many respondents were more concerned about …
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Since You Asked…
By Jimmy Porter
Front page… Clarion Ledger, June 9, 2005 —“Judge denies Killen trial delay.” Edgar Ray Killen is scheduled to go on trial for the June 21, 1964 slayings of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman. Once again, Mississippi race relations are in the national spotlight.
I graduated from Philadelphia High School in 1963 and pastored churches in Neshoba County from 1963 to 1970. I watched federal marshals and others search fields and remote places for the bodies of the three slain civil rights workers. I, along with others, felt the tension and sensed the fear that had a strangle hold on the majority of the people. As with most, I was in total shock that such hatred could exist in our town.
In recent months I have been asked often, “How do you feel about the trial?” “Should it be happening?” “What good will it do …
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Loose Lips Really Will Sink This Ship
By William Perkins
By now there’s virtually no one in America who hasn’t heard about the tsunami that swept through south Asia on the day after Christmas in 2004. The bone-chilling images of terrified people trying in vain to outrun the massive wall of water are stomach-churning.
The United States was one of the first countries to respond to the humanitarian crisis and is providing an astronomical percentage of the manpower and treasure assisting the survivors.
Southern Baptists are there. They won’t be featured in the headlines or spotlighted on the nightly television news, but they are there. In areas where they had to keep their heads down even before the tsunami disaster, they are hard at work to coordinate the Southern Baptist response.
Teams of trained Southern Baptist disaster relief workers are gearing up for the long-term recovery effort, Mississippi Baptists included. They will be working …
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War and Peace
By Jimmy Porter
“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still yet to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” (Matt. 24:6-7, NIV).
The newspaper for several days (mid January) has contained articles about the possibility of war – not only with Iraq but also with North Korea. Every leading journal is filled with pros and cons of war. Is it right or is it wrong? Should we or should we not? Are we to be the peacekeeper of the world? Do we have a right to intervene?
We have never known a day when there was not war in some part of the world. Even as we search the Bible we read of numerous conflicts. Over the years Christians have struggled to balance the “God of …
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Family Matters!
The minister said to a young couple on their wedding day, “Man fell but marriage did not. Whatever God intended marriage to be then he intends for marriage to be now.” Does it not appear that the home and marriage have drifted far from God’s original intent? The Bible says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24 NIV). “The family is an institution that God crafted. Scripture says very plainly that it starts with a husband and a wife and includes their children. The family is the essential center of culture and society; it’s where culture and society have their origins. The core of a solid family is marriage founded in the rock that is Jesus Christ.” (Richard Land, Faith & Family)
Dr Fred Lowery, in Covenant Marriage, gives us …
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