Fetal Personhood: Biblically Sound and Legally Complex – A Review of Mary Ziegler’s ‘Personhood’

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“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

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The quasi-parent mess

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“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

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NCLL warns churches to seek a safer VBS

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“[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

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Are Your Church's Governing Documents Ready for a Post-DOMA World?

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.

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