New Testament Church to host eighth college and career fair
New Testament Church of Milwaukee will host its eighth annual College and Career Fair Saturday, May 19 from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. This year’s theme, "Let Your Light So Shine," is based on Matthew 5:16. The college and career fair will feature a keynote address by Dr. Arnold Mitchem; president of the Council of Opportunity in Education called "The Voice of College Opportunity.
Designed primarily for high school students, the college and career fair provides students the opportunity to obtain expert college and career advice, learn about college life and to explore various career options and other educational opportunities in a Christian environment.
Students will attend workshops and information sessions while interacting with college students, mentors and other individuals from a variety of professional and technical fields.
Dr. Mitchem has been a voice for low-income and disabled Americans his entire career. Because of his work, the Federally Funded TRIO programs, the largest discretionary program in the U.S. Department of Education, have expanded by nearly 400% and now serves over 872,000 students at over 1,200 colleges and universities.
Dr. Mitchem graduated from the University of Southern Colorado in 1965.
Before receiving his Ph.D. in foundation of education at Marquette University in 1981, he studied European history as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the University of Wisconsin.
He began his career in Milwaukee as director of the Educational Opportunity Program at Marquette from 1969-1986. Prior to serving as director, he was on the history faculty of the university.
In 1986, he relocated to Washington, D.C. to represent low-income and disabled students nationally. Dr. Mitchem is the first and only president of the Council for Opportunity in Education. The fair will be held in the Family Life and Education Center of New Testament Church, 10201 West Bradley Road. There is a $5 cost per person for this event.
Students are encouraged to register (now until May 16) and to arrive early at the fair for a chance to win $50 cash prizes. Late registration will be held on site on Saturday, May 19. Student registration forms are available on the church website: www.new-tchurch.org/forms. For more info, call Denise Willis, 365-1690, Ext. 210.
Bishops ask diocese to support Catholic church in Africa
Washington--The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has invited all dioceses in the country to help support the rapidly growing Catholic population in Africa by contributing to a Pastoral Solidarity Fund for the Church in Africa.
The U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for the Church in Africa oversees the annual appeal that supports pastoral outreach, catechetical programs, Catholic schools, evangelization, education of seminarians, and the continuing education of clergy in all 55 African countries.
The appeal has grown dramatically since its inception in 2005, when 57 dioceses contributed $822,000.
In response to the 2006 appeal, 97 dioceses gave $1,727,000, an increase of 110 percent in total contributions and a 70 percent increase in the number of dioceses participating.
The Diocese of Orange, Calif. contributed $237,603, the highest total of any diocese. Despite struggling, to rebuild churches and schools devastated by Hurricane Katrina; the Diocese of Biloxi, Miss. gave $14, 449.
In the past 25 years, the number of Catholics in Africa has increased from 55 million to 144 million, and the number of priests has increased by 73 percent. While Africa is the fastest growing part of the universal Catholic Church, it faces extreme poverty.
Over 70 percent of Africans live on less than $2 per day, a level of poverty that cripples the ability of churches to raise sufficient funds for many pastoral needs.
"The vibrant church in Africa today, so rich in spiritual wealth, has enormous material need that calls us as sisters and brothers in the universal church to respond generously with solidarity and love," said Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee for the Church in Africa.
"This appeal has become an integral part of helping the flourishing Catholic community in Africa reach its enormous potential."
The committee has provided bishops with several options for dioceses to contribute to the appeal. These include taking up a collection in all parishes on a specific date; inviting parishes to make a voluntary collection; making contributions from diocesan funds; adding the Church in Africa as an item in the annual bishops’/diocesan appeal; holding a fundraiser event or soliciting funds from major donors. Dioceses have also been asked to appoint a diocesan coordinator who will help oversee the appeal.
Religious Commentary
Gays and the Black church
by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, BlackNews.com Columnist
The Reverend Dennis Meredith’s mouth had to drop when his head deacon brusquely accused him of turning the church into a "sissy church" and left in a huff.
Reverend Meredith had committed the unpardonable sin to the deacon and as it turned out hundreds of other black members at the predominantly Black Tabernacle Baptist Church in Atlanta of embracing and welcoming gay members.
The deacon and the other members that fled the church in protest over gays are not a hateful, intolerant aberration. There are reports from other Black churches of members marching out in indignation when their minister preaches a message of tolerance toward gays.
The first big warning sign that the issue would inflame, polarize, and even energize blacks within and without the Black pulpit came in 1997 when the Green Bay Packers perennial all-pro defensive end Reggie White, an ordained minister, touched off a firestorm of protest from gay groups with a rambling, hour-long talk to the Wisconsin legislature in which he took a huge swipe at gay rights and gay marriage. He later barnstormed through several Mid-Western cities pushing the anti-gay gospel at pro-family rallies.
Before his untimely death in 2005, White apologized for his anti-gay remarks, but he was unrepentant in his view about homosexuality.
He was a conservative Black minister and homosexuality still violated his biblical conception of the proper roles for men and women. In defying the canons of political correctness, White became the first celebrity Black evangelical to say publicly what many Black religious leaders said and believed privately. Few Black Americans joined in the loud chorus that condemned his remarks.
A year before White’s outburst, a Pew Poll measured black attitudes toward gay marriage and found that blacks by an overwhelming margin opposed it. A CNN poll eight years later showed that anti-gay attitudes among blacks had not changed much since then.
At a tightly packed press conference in October 2003, five of Michigan’s top Black prelates publicly called on the state legislature to amend the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. The ballot measure passed in November and more than fifty percent of Blacks backed it.
The same year the conservative Virginia-based Alliance for Marriage corralled a handful of top Black preachers to plop their name on the Alliance’s letterhead and tout the Alliance’s anti-gay rights agenda. The Alliance’s biggest catch has been Walter Fauntroy. His civil rights and Democratic Party credentials were impeccable.
He had marched and gone to jail with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and was a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus.
He not only endorsed the group’s drive for a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage, he was a leading Alliance board member, Fauntroy fumed at any talk that he was a stooge of the Republicans, that he was a turncoat Democrat, and a Bible spouting homophobe, or that he had shamefully betrayed the egalitarian message of Dr. King. "Only fools are going to be diverted to voting for a Republican on the question of gay marriage, and we’re not fools."
Yet, even a fool might see that it mattered little whether Fauntroy personally abandoned the Democratic Party, or even encouraged other Black Americans to do that. His name on the masthead of the group that was a stalking horse in the conservative family values war was a coup for the GOP.
That also sent a shiver through the ranks of its implacable foe, the NAACP. A foe that is, on all issues involving race, politics, and social justice. But gay rights was another matter.
At the group’s convention in July 2004, there was some talk of taking a delegate vote to put the organization firmly on record backing gay rights. It didn’t get far.
Reverend Julius Caesar Hope, the head of the NAACP’s religious affairs department, warned that a resolution to back gay marriage "would make some serious problems. I would think the membership would be overwhelmingly against it, based on our tradition in the Black community."
Seven months before the November 2004 presidential election, a legion of Black churchmen staged a rally on Capitol Hill, "We believed that we are faced with a challenge," Bishop Paul Morton thundered to the crowd, "God versus same-sex marriage and we will not compromise in that area."
A day later an AME convention forbade its ministers from performing same-sex marriages. Gay rights, and especially gay marriage, advocates had a big uphill battle to convince Black Americans that tolerance didn’t begin and end with race alone.
The Democrats and civil rights groups had no real defense against the anti-gay phobia among Black Christian groups and Black Americans that weren’t of the faith but still loathed gay marriage.
Nonetheless, the Reverend Meredith and the few Black ministers that preach a message of tolerance even as their church’s hemorrhage with dwindling memberships and collections should be applauded.
That’s the true Christian message; a message that many Christians seem to have forgotten.
BlackNews.com columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson’s new book, "The Latino Challenge to Black America: Towards a Conversation between African Americans and Hispanics" (Middle Passage Press) examines the hot button issues and problems that conflict and unite Blacks and Latinos. The book will be published jointly in English and Spanish editions.
Christian leaders sound alarm over Baldwin threat to daughter
Washington (Christian Newswire)--Two Christian leaders in Washington, DC, have expressed deep and urgent concern over a threatening phone call made by Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin to his pre-teen daughter, Ireland.
The Reverend Patrick J. Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition and the Reverend Rob Schenck (pronounced SHANK), president of the National Clergy Council in Washington, DC, released this joint statement today:
"Alec Baldwin should be held accountable by the public and the entertainment industry and mandated to undergo counseling by the courts. This is an inexcusable, frightening threat on a young child.
"Today as we remember the Virginia Tech students, we must be mindful that every violent threat against an innocent person demands a strong, clear response.
"We should never tolerate Mr. Baldwin calling a young woman a ‘thoughtless little pig’ and saying to her he’s going to ‘straighten your a** out’ anymore than we should tolerate talk show hosts calling young female athletes ‘nappy headed hos.’
"We expect NBC to immediately suspend Mr. Baldwin from the "Thirty Rock" show until he apologizes and successfully completes treatment."
