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Carter book slams male-centric faiths

ATLANTA - Former President Jimmy Carter says male-dominated religions contribute to the oppression and abuse of women by twisting sacred texts to portray females as inferior to men “in the eyes of God.”

The 89-year-old Carter makes that argument in his new book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power.

In an interview broadcast on NBC’s Meet the Press, the former president faulted his former denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Roman Catholic church for denying women the same opportunities as men to serve as pastors and priests.

Carter said some married men who belong to those churches conclude that their wives are inferior and treat them accordingly.

The Catholic Catechism and the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message declare that men and women have different roles but are equal in the eyes of God.

World Vision annuls

decision to hire gays

NEW YORK - Facing a firestorm of protest, the prominent Christian relief agency World Vision on Wednesday dropped a two-day-old policy that would have allowed the charity to hire Christians in same-sex marriages.

The aid group told supporters in a letter that the board had made a mistake and was returning to its policy requiring celibacy outside of marriage “and faithfulness within the Bible covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.”

“We have listened to you and want to say thank you and to humbly ask for your forgiveness,” the agency said in the letter, signed by World Vision President Richard Stearns and board Chairman Jim Bere.

Based in Federal Way, Wash., and started by evangelicals, World Vision has an international operating budget of nearly $1 billion and conducts economic development and emergency relief projects. Since Monday, Stearns said the board had heard from major evangelical groups and leaders who had told them they had strayed from their core beliefs.

  • The Associated Press

Franklin Graham says dad also spoke out

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Franklin Graham has an answer for those turned off by his litany of condemnations of gays and lesbians, Islam and President Barack Obama: He claims he’s only saying what his father would say if Billy Graham, now 95, were a younger man.

In a Tuesday interview with The Charlotte Observer, the younger Graham cast himself in the tradition of his father, who he said took unpopular but moral stands in his prime against racial segregation and communism.

“You talk about controversy - my father stood with Martin Luther King in the early 1960s,” Graham said. “My father never worried about polls. I don’t care about them, either. And with the issues we are facing today - if my father were a younger man, he would be addressing and speaking out in the exact same way I’m speaking out on them.”

Franklin Graham’s critics have charged otherwise, saying he’s steering the Charlotte-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association toward a conservative political agenda and away from Billy Graham’s later-in-life emphasis on a loving God.

Religion, Pages 12 on 03/29/2014

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