There’s no shortage of sad songs about rainy days and lovers who don’t bring flowers. And then there are songs that truly bring the pain — songs so despairing they can make us wonder why we even bother. Here are 25 little ditties so crushing, they could knock Dick Cheney to his knees.
The evangelical Christian movement, which has been pivotal in reshaping the country’s political landscape since the 1980s, has shifted in potentially momentous ways in recent years, broadening its agenda and exposing new fissures.
The death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell last week highlighted the fact that many of the movement’s fiery old guard who helped lead conservative Christians into the embrace of the Republican Party are aging and slowly receding from the scene. In their stead, a new generation of leaders who have mostly avoided the openly partisan and confrontational approach of their forebears have become increasingly influential.
Typified by megachurch pastors like the Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., and the Rev. Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago, the new breed of evangelical leaders — often to the dismay of those who came before them — are more likely to speak out about more liberal causes like AIDS, Darfur, poverty and global warming than controversial social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.
But the conservative legacy of the religious right persists, and abortion continues to be a defining issue, even a litmus test, for most evangelicals.
Parents who loan cars to teenagers rejoice.
The AVL-900 vehicle tracking system from GoPoass Technology of Taiwan not only lets you watch the location of your vehicle in real time it but also lets you dial-in to your car using the included microphone.
For the in-car monitoring you can either send a text to your car or let it ring 5 times. Both of these trigger the system to give you a call back so you can listen to what’s going on in your cockpit.
Last year, a five-month independent investigation uncovered evidence that 98 percent of the 258 new churches reported by three church planters in the Rio Grande Valley between 1999 and 2005 no longer exist, and some never existed—except on paper. Those churches received more than $1.3 million from the BGCT. The investigative team faulted the BGCT Executive Board staff for poor oversight, uneven management, failure to abide by internal guidelines and misplaced trust.