Queen Latifah, Mary J. Blige, and Missy Elliott have teamed up to executive produce Lifetime’s TV movie “The Clark Sisters: First Ladies of Gospel,” based on the lives of the legendary singing siblings.

The movie will be broadcast April 11 on Lifetime.

At a news conference for the film, Blige, an award-winning singer, spoke of the impact the sisters (Jacky Cullum Chisholm, Denise “Niecy” Clark Bradford, Elbernita “Twinkie” Clark, Dorinda Clark-Cole, and Karen Clark Sheard) had on her life.

“I’ve learned so much from them. They just have the anointing,” Blige gushed.

“Seeing their story was like seeing what do our angels go through? They’ve been my Earth angels. So we all want to see what their life was like. What did they sacrifice? What did they give up to save our lives? That’s why we’re telling the story,” she said.

According to the synopsis, the film tells the “musical tale of the incomparable gospel singers, The Clark Sisters. ‘The Clark Sisters: First Ladies of Gospel’ recounts the story of the highest selling female gospel group in history and of their trailblazing mother, Mattie Moss Clark (Aunjanue Ellis).

SOURCE: Christian Post, Jeannie Law

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The owner of a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Georgia that became the target of a protest this week after a breast-feeding mother complained about being asked to cover up while she dined there Monday has formally apologized.

Anger over the incident at the Mullins Crossing Chick-fil-A in Evans erupted after Samantha McIntosh posted her experience on Facebook stemming from her decision to breast-feed her 7-month-old daughter in the restaurant’s dining area. McIntosh insists she was appropriately covered for the feeding but complaints from some customers triggered a warning from the restaurants manager which subsequently led to her leaving in a huff.

“I’ve never made a huge deal about it but I feel as though I have a right to feed my baby however I want just as ANY OTHER MOTHER has that right (as long as it’s not harmful in any way *duh*)! So imagine my shock and surprise when I am sitting at Chick-fil-a yesterday with my 9 year old niece and my daughter (breast-feeding) and the manager walks up out of nowhere and tries to hand me her jacket saying someone has complained and would prefer if I cover up because of the other children in the restaurant,” McIntosh wrote.

“…please keep in mind that I am wearing a nursing tank top under a large long sleeve shirt. My shirt was pulled up and resting on my daughter’s cheek and my tank top was pulled down just enough for my daughter to latch so I happen to know that absolutely no skin was showing and we sat in a booth in the back of the restaurant,” she explained.

McIntosh said she stopped breast-feeding after the request was made by the manager but got angry when her young niece began asking questions such as why would a baby eating offend someone to the point where they would get a manager involved.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Leonardo Blair

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The Church of England has released a guidance stating that sexual relations belong between married, heterosexual couples, and that sex in gay or straight civil partnerships “falls short of God’s purpose for human beings.”

The House of Bishops of the Church of England issued pastoral guidance in response to the recent introduction to mixed-sex civil partnerships, which says: “For Christians, marriage – that is, the lifelong union between a man and a woman, contracted with the making of vows – remains the proper context for sexual activity.”

The church “seeks to uphold that standard” in its approach to civil partnerships, and “to affirm the value of committed, sexually abstinent friendships” within such partnerships.

“The introduction of same sex marriage, through the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, has not changed the church’s teaching on marriage or same sex relationships,” it says.

“Sexual relationships outside heterosexual marriage are regarded as falling short of God’s purpose for human beings.”

The Church of England explains that while “many of the provisions in the legislation on civil partnerships are, however, similar to, or identical with, those in marriage law,” the commitment in a civil partnership is different than that of a marriage.

“In particular, [civil partnerships are] not predicated on the intention to engage in a sexual relationship,” says the guidance.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Leah MarieAnn Klett

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Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins finished reading through the Bible in two years and would “definitely recommend it.”

Cousins posted a photo of his personalized Bible with an “FCA” logo on the top right corner on Twitter last week.

“It took me over two years, but just finished reading through the entire Bible for the first time. Def recommend it!” he wrote. The post has received over 90,000 likes with over 6,000 comments.

It took me over two years, but just finished reading through the entire Bible for the first time. Def recommend it! pic.twitter.com/EjBqVWMZLZ

— Kirk Cousins (@KirkCousins8) January 18, 2020

One commenter agreed with him writing, “The best book you can read. I’ve read it multiple times, and now I’m reading it with my wife. God is good.”

The football star has not been shy about his faith. Earlier this year, when his team defeated the New Orleans Saints in a stunning victory, he gave airtime to God.

Source: Christian Headlines

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The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services is threatening to pull federal funding from California for requiring private insurers to cover abortion.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a notice of violation to California Friday, saying the state was breaking federal conscience laws. Specifically, HHS says the state is in violation of the Weldon Amendment, which bars federal funds for any state or local program that “subjects any institutional or individual health care entity to discrimination on the basis that the health care entity does not provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.”

A 2014 California rule requires all insurance plans to cover abortion.

HHS was acting on complaints from Skyline Wesleyan Church and Missionary Guadalupanas of the Holy Spirit, a Catholic order of religious sisters.

California has 30 days to respond. If it doesn’t roll back the requirement, the state could lose federal money, HHS said. Further, “this action may ultimately result in limitations on continued receipt of certain HHS funds,” HHS said in a statement.

“No one in America should be forced to pay for or cover other people’s abortions,” said OCR Director Roger Severino. “We are putting California on notice that it must stop forcing people of good will to subsidize the taking of human life, not only because it’s the moral thing to do, but because it’s the law.”

Source: Christian Headlines

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Jim Denison is the founder and CEO of the Denison Forum, a nonprofit Christian media organization that comments on current issues through a biblical lens. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of BCNN1.

Kobe Bryant, one of the greatest players in basketball history, died yesterday in a helicopter crash along with his thirteen-year-old daughter Gianna.

Bryant played twenty seasons for the Los Angeles Lakers, winning five NBA titles. He was forty-one years old. For more, see my website article, “The death of Kobe Bryant and the urgency of legacy.”

As the sports world follows this terrible tragedy, the world’s attention is focused on another tragedy of global significance.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The United Nations General Assembly designated January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, as this annual day of commemoration.

Today is the seventy-fifth anniversary of that liberation. More than 1.1 million men, women, and children lost their lives at Auschwitz-Birkenau. However, this was just one of more than forty-four thousand incarceration sites operated by the Third Reich.

The Jewish people comprise only 0.2 percent of the global population. Despite their tiny demographic size, they have been the victims of systemic persecution and oppression for millennia, beginning with their enslavement in Egypt (Exodus 1:12-15) and continuing today.

The UN urged every member state not only to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism, but also to develop educational programs to prevent future genocides.

In that context, I’d like to ask today: Why do so many people hate the Jews? Let’s consider three factors.

In Genesis 26, Isaac is in conflict with the Philistines. The heart of the dispute was that “he had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him” (v. 14). As a result, they stopped his water wells, threatening his future, and urged him to abandon land he had cultivated (vv. 15–16).

From then to today, jealousy of Jewish achievements has been a tragic factor in anti-Semitism.

The Jews’ passion for literacy, centered in their love for the Torah and commitment to teach it to their children (Deuteronomy 6:4-7), made them unique across centuries when literacy was in decline and positioned them for success in business and commerce. And their commitments to family and to family traditions and values have enabled them to survive and thrive in the most challenging of times and places.

Today, 44 percent of Jewish households in America have an income exceeding $100,000. This is 50 percent higher than the US average. Though Jews constitute only 2.1 percent of America’s population, they comprise 37 percent of our Nobel laureates.

Jealousy contributes to a second factor: fear of Jewish uniqueness and success.

Source: Baptist Press

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Mark Silk is Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and director of the college’s Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life. He is a Contributing Editor of the Religion News Service. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of BCNN1.

In October of 1802, a group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, wrote to President Thomas Jefferson asking that he support their efforts to do away with their state’s Standing Order, which taxed citizens to support the Congregational Church. Jefferson was happy to oblige, writing on January 1, 1803:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

Over the past few decades, Jefferson’s wall metaphor has come in for plenty of criticism from conservatives — perhaps because, after the Supreme Court decided in the middle of the last century that the First Amendment’s religion clauses applied to the states, something like a wall of separation was indeed built between church and state.

From bans on prayer and Bible reading in public schools to teaching creationism to rules regarding religious displays on public land, the Court embraced the principle that government endorsement of religion, or the appearance of such endorsement, is unconstitutional. Call it the Endorsement Wall.

Today we’re seeing the building of a new wall of separation, this one resulting from a systematic effort to exempt religious institutions and individuals from government rules. Call it the Religious Liberty Wall.

During the last decades of the last century, the Supreme Court under Chief Justices Warren Burger and William Rehnquist took an increasingly expansive view of the government’s right to set bounds on religious liberty.

In the 1982 Bob Jones University case, the Court upheld the right of the IRS to deny tax-exempt status to private schools that practice racial discrimination. In 1986, it denied a Jewish chaplain’s right to wear a yarmulke while on duty and in uniform as a commissioned officer in the Air Force. And in the notorious 1990 peyote case, Employment Division v. Smith, the Court went so far as to assert that Free Exercise claims cannot be made in federal court, challenging neutral laws of general applicability.

Source: Religion News Service

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