Earlier today, Max Blumenthal of The Daily Beast took an unfair swipe at Lynn Vincent, implying that Sarah Palin’s book collaborator and the WORLD senior writer is a racist because of her association as a co-author with a old college chum. “[I]t is Vincent’s association with Robert Stacy McCain that offers the clearest window into her far-right politics,” writes Blumenthal, who labels Lynn as “noxious” in his headline. He also brings up as further proof an article Lynn wrote for WORLD last January, which was about how African-Americans have been fighting the high toll of abortion in their own community by developing compassionate alternatives.

Ben Smith at Politico, however, came to Lynn’s defense this afternoon, writing:

. . . having done my own profile of Vincent using many of the same data points a couple of months ago — this seems both off target and missing something pretty basic about the version of Evangelical conservatism to which both Vincent and Palin belong.

The pastor of the San Diego megachurch Vincent attends (with Carrie Prejean, natch) is black. She’s also spent most of the last few years on a pair of inspirational books about, basically, racial reconciliation in the friendship between a rich white art dealer and a homeless black drifter, the first of them a Times bestseller. More broadly, she hails from a (large) stream of Evangelicalism that puts racial reconciliation very high on the agenda.

Vincent is — like Palin — well to the right, as Blumenthal notes, on abortion; but the race card (in both cases) seems out of place.

Earlier this morning, we posted about former Bryan, Texas, Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson and her change of heart on abortion. The Washington Times has added another layer to the story, reporting today that Johnson’s church started giving her the cold shoulder once they found out she was no longer pro-abortion:

Now she is facing a different kind of music at her parish, St. Francis Episcopal in nearby College Station, the home of Texas A&M University.

Whereas clergy and parishioners welcomed her as a Planned Parenthood employee, now they are buttonholing her after Sunday services.

“Now that I have taken this stand, some of the people there are not accepting of that,” she told The Washington Times. “People have told me they disagree with my choice. One of the things I’ve been told is that as Episcopalians, we embrace our differences and disagreements. While I agree with that, I am not sure I can go to a place where I don’t feel I am welcome.”

The rector at St. Francis refused to comment on the charge of nonacceptance.

Ironically, Johnson had a hard time finding a church home while she worked at Planned Parenthood, telling the Times:

“I was raised Southern Baptist but didn’t find the Southern Baptist community was very accepting of my work at Planned Parenthood. It felt there was a spiritual conflict in what I was doing, but you just begin to rationalize it. I didn’t want to leave these women without options, so you begin to think you are doing the right thing, although it doesn’t feel right.”

After being told by a Southern Baptist church and a nondenominational church that they could not join, she and her husband, Doug, landed at St. Francis, a U.S. Episcopal Church, which, of all mainline denominations, has one of the most liberal stances on abortion (see Marcia Segelstein’s “‘Abortion is a blessing.’”

The Times adds this little tidbit near the end of its piece:

A photo on the front page of the church’s Web site, stfrancisonline.org, shows [Johnson] seated at the right end of the front row, holding a girl dressed in pink. Her husband, dressed in an orange shirt, is to her right.

“Chief among our values,” says a statement below the photo, “are service, tolerance and understanding of the people and events that God has put into our lives.”

Johnson said that her and her family “really, really love” St. Francis and don’t want to leave.

Maybe there’s a counterrevolution brewing. One can always hope. I recently wrote about the Anscombe Society at Princeton, a student organization that promotes traditional moral values, especially when it comes to sex. Turns out Harvard has its own pro-abstinence club called True Love Revolution, which was founded in 2006 by students Justin Murray and Sarah Kinsella, who have since graduated and are now married. Not only does TLR, as it is known, promote abstinence, its updated mission statement supports traditional marriage and says that choosing abstinence is “true feminism.” Naturally this has upset feminists on campus, with the back and forth being played out in the school newspaper, The Harvard Crimson.

TLR has also drawn the attention of Newsweek’s religion editor, Lisa Miller, who wrote about it in this week’s issue. Miller, hardly known for her unbiased approach to reporting on religion, seems to have a split personality on this topic. Apparently referring to TLR’s support for traditional marriage, or as she puts it “not gay marriage,” she writes that its platform seems to have been “cribbed from the Christian conservative playbook.” No bias there, huh? By the way, if anyone can find me a copy of that playbook, I’d love to see it. On the other hand, she thinks TLR may be on to something when it comes to “its articulation of students’ dissatisfaction with sex and sex talk on campus.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. She goes on to quote Donna Freitas, author of Sex and the Soul, and Christine Firer Hinze, a theologian from Fordham University. Freitas surveyed college students on the subject of sex and came to the conclusion that students feel stymied about expressing what they truly want out of relationships—which is more than just sex. Hinze believes, as Miller writes, “that choosing abstinence can carry a strong countercultural message and a vision of personal fulfillment beyond immediate gratification.”

Now there’s a concept.

Last week, we posted news of a Planned Parenthood director in Bryan, Texas, having a change of heart and joining the pro-life cause. WORLD contributor Julie Smyth talked to Abby Johnson, who described in detail the day that changed her life:

In late September, the abortionist at Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas, needed assistance, so he asked the center’s director Abby Johnson to hold the ultrasound probe during a dilation and evacuation abortion. Johnson watched as the 13-week-old unborn child attempted to avoid the probe. “I saw a full profile of the baby from head to foot,” she told me.

Once the abortion procedure began, Johnson saw the child “crumple” under the pressure of the vacuum and then in an instant the child was gone. The reality of seeing the baby moving struck her as she stood in shock and dropped the ultrasound probe, she recalled: “My heart was racing. I kept thinking about my daughter.”

Ready Julie article in its entirety here.

Our Lynn Vincent and Carrie Prejean have several things in common: They both live in San Diego, they attend the same church, and they’ve been labeled as “homophobes” by those representing the New Media left. As CCC pointed out on Whirled Views last night, Lynn was moonlighting yesterday over at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood site, interviewing the former Miss California.

In the introduction to the interview, Lynn addresses her and Prejean’s accusers:

See, the irony is that people like Carrie and I can be confidantes and even best friends with the gays and lesbians in our lives. We can be in mentoring relationships, like Carrie and Jim [a gay man who helped her prepare for the pageant]. We can collaborate on ideas, as I did with “Anlir,” a gay commenter whose ideas I often adopted when I managed World Magazine’s evangelical-focused blog. We can even be accepting of our family members’ sexuality.

But if we dare to differ on the issue of gay marriage, then the truth about our actual relationships with gays and lesbians is ignored, liberals’ clairvoyant “insight” into our hearts and minds is substituted as fact, and our protestations are filed mockingly under the “some of my best friends” defense.

If, on the institution of marriage, we say publicly that we believe the same thing as voters in 31 states – in every state, in fact, where gay marriage has been put on the ballot – then we become targets who must be defamed and destroyed.

You can read the interview here.

Most news accounts on the shooting at Fort Hood refer to 13 dead, but let’s not forget there was a 14th victim: soldier Francheska Velez’s unborn baby. Last Thursday, Velez, who was on maternity leave from the Army, had stopped by Fort Hood where she and her child were both killed.

Maria Vitale at LifeNews.com points out that the killer should be prosecuted under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, aka Laci and Conner’s law, named for the victims in the Scott Peterson case:

It would seem that the law applies in this case for three reasons: the act of violence was committed on federal property…the shooting was allegedly done by a member of the military…and the violence could be classified as an act of terrorism.

Then there’s the question of Texas law.

According to National Right to Life, under a law signed in June of 2003 and taking effect in September of that year, the protections of the entire criminal code extend to “an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth.” This law does not apply to “conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child” or to “a lawful medical procedure performed by a physician or other licensed health care provider with the requisite consent.”

Velez had a right to give birth to her baby. Her child had a right to be protected from violence.

Vitale goes on to write that the Obama Administration has a moral obligation to press for the prosecution of the killer under this act, and if the Obama doesn’t, she wrote, “it will demonstrate to the world that the president is caving into a pro-abortion lobby who will not recognize the legal rights of any child in the womb—even a child whose mother desperately longs to give birth.”

UPDATE: AP reports:

Military officials say the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 and wounding 29 in last week’s shooting rampage at his military post in Texas will face 13 charges of premeditated murder under the military’s legal system. The decision makes him eligible for the death penalty if convicted.

A formal announcement about the charges against Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is expected later Thursday. Two U.S. military officials described the charges to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the case publicly.

The officials said it is not yet decided whether to charge Hasan with a 14th count of murder related to the death of the unborn child of a pregnant shooting victim.

When a California jury convicted Billy Joe Johnson of first-degree murder with special circumstances for a 2002 gang-related murder, the white supremacist asked for the death penalty. But it wasn’t because Johnson wanted to die – It’s because he wanted to be comfortable.

The Los Angeles Times reports today that Johnson asked for a death sentence because he figures the state will never inflict it. He’s probably right: California has 685 inmates on death row, but has carried out only 13 executions since 1977. The state has enforced a death penalty moratorium for four years, trying to sort out whether executions cause pain to inmates.

Not only will Johnson likely escape execution, he’ll also enjoy comforts most maximum- security prisoners in the general population don’t have: A private cell with a television and other approved electronic devices, liberal phone privileges, and private visitation. Johnson’s attorney, Michael Molfetta, acknowledged his client’s plan: “It’s not that he thinks conditions will be better; they are better.” Johnson, 46, figures he’ll be 70-years-old by the time his appeals run out, and according to Molfetta: “he doesn’t care to live beyond that.”

“If you want to change a society, you have to change the language of a society,” said Darrow Miller to students at The King’s College in New York last month, as part of the school’s Distinguished Visitor Series.

Changing the language a society uses means changing how people think, not just their behavior, said Miller, adding that one area we have to change our behavior and thinking is in our approach to work. Miller, an author and former executive for Food for the Hungry, said that the consequences of a non-biblical idea of work have been poverty in the developing world and materialism in Western nations.

Miller said that in the West, work is all about “acquiring things.” This view leads to a “dualistic mindset.” In other words, Christians tend to separate their faith from work. Miller said that the biblical idea of work means that “work is part of our dignity” and there should be “no division between the sacred and the secular.”

Regarding poverty, Miller said, “If the root of the problem was lack of money or lack of resources, the problem would be solved.” He cited one example of how ideas contribute to poverty: “One of the greatest causes of poverty in the world is a lie. That lie is that men are superior to women.” In developing countries, he said, “women are the ones working” because of the pervading view that “humans weren’t made to work.” Miller added that changing this dehumanizing view of work into a biblical view is “going to the root of solving the problem.”

According to Miller, the only real hope of solving poverty “has to begin with ideas.” In order to incorporate this biblical view of work in life, he encouraged students to “look at the whole of society and look at what God has put inside of you.”

Kristin Rudolph is a student at The King’s College in New York City.

I am growing more confused by many thought leaders in the black community who speak of how racist America is yet encourage more and more blacks do put their lives in the hands of government officials who are white. Is government bureaucracy immune from racism or classism? If American society is categorically racist against blacks then black liberation would focus on divorcing blacks from dependence on the state—which is controlled by “rich white people,” as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright says.

In his book Hope on a Tightrope, Princeton University religion professor Cornel West makes the claim that in America “the very discovery that black people are human beings is a new one.” There was a time when blacks were considered “three-fifths human—we were monkeys or rapists,” writes West. “Now we are projected as crack addicts or criminals.” Moreover, he adds, blacks have always been cornered into positions of “having to defend our humanity.”

West later explains that whites cannot avoid being shaped by white supremacy:

White brothers and sisters have been shaped by 244 years of supremacist slavery, 87 years of white supremacist Jim and Jane Crow, and then another 40 years in which significant progress has been made. The stereotypes still cut deep. Any white brother or sister who deeply revels in the humanity of black, brown, yellow, and red brothers and sisters must undergo a kind of conversion, metamorphosis, and transformation.

According to the most recent government data employment numbers, about 60 percent percent of non-postal federal employees are white. If whites have a white supremacy problem and will not change without “metamorphsis,” then the last place I would want to encourage blacks to align themselves with would be the federal government. Right? Isn’t injustice inevitable for blacks if the majority of government employees recently learned that blacks are human?

Why, then, is there such blind trust that government officials will serve the interest of blacks and other minorities? Or is it the case that the assumption of racism only applies to those white people with whom black elites do not agree on policy issues?

I agree with West that white racism toward blacks describes most of America’s history sanctioned and promoted by many Bible-believing Christians. It would seem, however, that blacks leaders employing racial reasoning would promote initiatives to free blacks from the risk of coercion and injustice at the hands of whites in government by doing all that is necessary to position blacks to be free from the surrogate decisions of white government bureaucrats. Or, maybe “racism” is simply a convenient charge to distract us from having principled arguments about what is best. Sadly, until many black leaders can justify trusting whites in government, the race card remains on the table to be used against whites and others who disagree with socialistic public policy.

Laws banning discrimination against gays in housing and employment in Salt Lake City were passed unanimously by the city’s council last night, thanks to support from the Mormon Church.

“The church supports these ordinances because they are fair and reasonable and do not do violence to the institution of marriage,” said Michael Otterson, director of public affairs for the church.

“I think it establishes that we can stand together on common ground that we don’t have to agree on everything, but there are lot of things that we can work on and be allies,” said Brandie Balken, director of the gay rights advocacy group Equality Utah.

Mormon support for the laws was due in part to exceptions that were included allowing churches to maintain their religious principles and standards without any penalty.

In addressing the Salt Lake City Council last night, Otterson pointed out that the endorsement does not change the church’s position on traditional marriage: “[The church] remains unequivocally committed to defending the bedrock foundation of marriage between a man and a woman.”