“In Personhood: The New Civil War over Reproduction, Mary Ziegler… rigorously explains some of the legal implications of fetal personhood in the debate over abortion and suggests that if the Supreme Court did embrace the pro-life movement’s constitutional argument, it might create more complications than pro-life activists expect.” - TGC
“The law formally defines “quasi”-parent as ‘a person not a legal parent who nonetheless has greater rights in a contest with the legal parent than does any other party.’” - WORLD
“[T]o protect churches from litigation…NCLL suggests churches ensure they are organized for VBS, and examine their facilities and grounds for dangers accidents and or injuries. NCLL also suggests that churches use qualified workers and require them to read and sign paperwork on policies and procedures.” OneNewsNow
It is my responsibility under the law to ensure that children in my district are receiving an adequate education [and] I take that responsibility very seriously, whether those children are in our schools or homeschooled. OneNewsNow
“Noting that ‘emotions are running high,’ and less than 24 hours after meeting with protestors camped outside his state capitol office, Gov. Rick Scott issued a statewide ‘Day of Prayer for Unity in Florida’ for July 21 as a response to the George Zimmerman verdict in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.”
Reposted, with permission, from Theologically Driven.
One of the more interesting discoveries I made when researching Baptist polity a few years ago was the lost practice of “recognition councils.” Most Baptists are familiar with ordination councils, in which a local church calls together a group of elders and messengers from like-minded area churches to examine an aspiring minister’s fitness for ministry, and thereafter to advise the church either to pursue ordination, to delay ordination until the examinee is more fit for the ministry, or to deny ordination entirely. Recognition councils occur when a new assembly calls together a group of elders from like-minded area churches to examine its governing documents, and thereafter to advise the assembly to pursue chartering, to delay chartering until its documents are in order, or even to abandon entirely its plan for a new church.
Typically, recognition councils examined a prospective church’s constitution and bylaws, doctrinal statement, and covenant. But there are a great many other documents that may also be subjected to examination: mission statements, philosophies of ministry, employee job descriptions, teacher policies, nursery policies, facilities-usage policies, etc. What I’d like to suggest in this post is that the lost practice of recognition councils be formally revived, or, at the very least, that churches informally pool their collective minds to assist one another in creating ecclesiastical documents that are orthodox, orthoprax, and in our litigious society, as litigation-proof as is possible.
