Do you see anything wrong with this sign?  Of course!  It’s discriminatory because women are commonly found on construction and road repair crews holding these signs and working equally along side men.  At least that’s the argument from Cynthia Good, founding editor of PINK Magazine, as reported in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Good demanded that the signs be removed and the Atlanta Public Works Commissioner, Joe Basista, agreed.  “Public Works officials are replacing 50 ‘Men Working’ with signs that say ‘Workers Ahead.’ It will cost $22 to cover over some of the old signs and $144 to buy new signs, said Public Works spokeswoman Valerie Bell-Smith said.”  To a city like Atlanta, the largest in the South, that amount is like pennies in an ash tray.  But it is Good’s response to the city’s action and her future intentions that indicates a larger discussion – “Score one for gender equality.  (Atlanta) gets it.  (Now) we’re calling on the rest of the nation to follow suit and make a statement that we will not accept these subtle forms of discrimination.”

AP reported early this morning that Sen. Barack Obama “laid claim to the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday night, taking a historic step toward his once-improbable goal of becoming the nation’s first black president.” It is quite true that this is a “historical step”; one that my children’s children will learn in American History classes. So where does this leave us now? Well, I’m not sharp enough to know exactly. But we can reflect on where we’ve been. And that’s exactly what Thabiti Anyabwile has done is this excellent timeline.

In his new book, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World, David Wells comments on the two weakness of the classical evangelicals. First, doctrine shrank because liberty was allowed on all issues other than the core principles that defined evangelicals – Scripture’s authority and Christ’s penal substitutionary death (7-8). In the end, a “series of hybrid” evangelicals emerged – “feminist evangelicals, ecumenical evangelicals, liberal evangelicals”, etc – that were defined and shaped by their additional “tag” rather than the core principles (9).

What identifies one as an Evangelical? What are the private and public commitments of Evangelicals? Those aren’t easy questions given the landscape of current discussion on Evangelicalism. To help in your understanding of these matters, An Evangelical Manifesto: A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment was released today at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. and signed by over 80 evangelical leaders. The purpose: “The two-fold purpose of this declaration is first to address the confusions and corruptions that attend the term Evangelical in the United States and much of the Western world today, and second to clarify where we stand on issues that have caused consternation over Evangelicals in public life.” (2, original emphasis)

You’ve probably noticed from the news coverage that this week is the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, i.e. Hajj. It’s been particularly news-worthy because the president of the predominantly Shi’a Muslim and Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is on the pilgrimage and thereby inadvertently causing sectarian tension in the Sunni dominated kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

New York Times reported today that the Diocese of San Joaquin voted on Saturday, Dec. 9th, to split from the Episcopal Church.  As reported, this is monumental because it’s the first time in the church’s history that an entire diocese has split from the church. 

I thought that maybe Keith would post something about Tammy Faye’s death since he has taken care of discussing the passing of other “luminaries” of late. Maybe it’s because of the news cycle that not many blogs have said anything about her passing yet either. At least the handful of blogs that I regularly check have been silent about her. There could be other reasons for silence about Tammy Faye, but I won’t attempt to speculate why.