A counseling student who declined to advise a gay client might have been expelled from her university because of her faith, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday (Jan. 27).

Citing her evangelical Christian religion, Julea Ward disagreed with professors at Eastern Michigan University who told her she was required to support the sexual orientation of her clients. When the graduate student was assigned a client who sought counseling on a same-sex relationship, she asked to have the client referred to another counselor.

Ward was then expelled from the school.

A lower court sided with the university, but Ward appealed, saying the school had violated her First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and free exercise of religion.

On Friday, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that Ward could have a valid claim, and sent the case back to a district court for another hearing.

“A reasonable jury could conclude that Ward’s professors ejected her from the counseling program because of hostility toward her speech and faith, not due to a policy against referrals,” the appeals court ruled.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has helped defend Ward, hailed the ruling as a victory for religious freedom.

“No individual should be forced out of their profession solely because of her religious beliefs,” said Eric Rassbach, the Becket Fund’s national litigation director.

The Ypsilanti, Mich.-based university issued a statement noting that the court has not ruled in favor of Ward, but rather called for more legal consideration.

“This case has never been about religion or religious discrimination,” the university said. “It is not about homosexuality or sexual orientation. This case is about what is in the best interest of a person who is in need of counseling.”

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PARIS — A decade ago, Rene Lebouvier requested that his local Catholic church erase his name from the baptismal register. The church noted his demands on the margins of its records and the chapter was closed.

But the clergy abuse scandals rocking Europe, coupled with Pope Benedict XVI’s conservative stances on contraception, hardened Lebouvier’s views. Last October, a court in Normandy ruled in favor of his lawsuit to have his name permanently deleted from church records — making the 71-year-old retiree the first Frenchman to be officially “de-baptized.”

“I took the judicial route to get myself de-baptized because of the church’s excesses,” said Lebouvier, speaking by telephone from his village of Fleury, near the D-Day beaches.

“It’s a sort of honesty toward the church because they have a guy on their register who doesn’t believe in God.”

Lebouvier’s case is among a growing wave of de-baptisms in Europe, one of the most visible manifestations of the continent’s secular drift. Websites offering informal de-baptism certificates have mushroomed. Other Christians are formally breaking from the church by opting out of state church taxes.

“The movement is happening across Europe,” said Anne Morelli, who heads a center studying religion and secularity at the Free University of Brussels. “It was very apparent during 2011 — in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Austria. It is obviously related to the scandals of pedophile priests, but it has been going on for some time.”

While there are no official statistics, experts and secular activists count the numbers of de-baptisms in the tens of thousands. It’s a phenomenon that has touched Protestant as well as Catholic communities.

In France, the de-baptism drive affects a relatively tiny proportion of Christians, experts say. Still, Lebouvier’s case may create a precedent.

The local bishop of Coutances, Stanislas Lalanne, has appealed the court ruling, a process that could take years.

“Baptism is a spiritual gift, it’s bigger than we are,” said Bernard Podvin, spokesman for the French Bishops Confederation, who would not comment on the specifics of the Normandy case. “It can’t be confined to a purely administrative framework.”

But if Lebouvier wins, de-baptism could become standard practice here, and trigger copycat lawsuits across Europe.

“The church is afraid the movement might amplify,” said Marc Blondel, president of the Paris-based National Federation of Freethinkers, who says he will launch another de-baptism drive if Lebouvier prevails.

Lebouvier’s split from the church took decades. Born in a deeply conservative and religious community, he went to Catholic school. But instead of becoming the priest his mother had wished, he became a baker, moving to Paris and joining a leftist trade union.

“I changed 180 degrees, “ he said. “It took time, but it happened.”

Change is afoot elsewhere. In neighboring Belgium, which has been hit hard by the church sex scandals, de-baptism requests in the French-speaking region alone soared to roughly 2,000 in 2010, compared to 66 two years earlier, according to the Brussels Federation of Friends of Secular Morality. The numbers of people reportedly leaving the Dutch church reportedly shot up 25 percent.

In Britain, a de-baptism certificate offered as a joke by the National Secular Society has since turned serious after tens of thousands of people downloaded it.

“Some people actually do feel actively hostile toward churches,” said society president Terry Sanderson. “And they want to express that by saying, ‘I’m not one of your members.’”

In Germany, a record 181,000 Catholics formally split from the Catholic Church in 2011 — the first time that Catholic defections outpaced Protestants leaving. Rather than requesting de-baptisms, Germans fill out government paperwork saying they no longer want to pay church taxes.

“I don’t think they want to get rid of their belief, their connection to Jesus and the baptism, but they don’t want to be connected with the church hierarchy,” said Christian Weisner, German spokesman for the international lay reform movement We are Church.

At stake for many cash-strapped European churches is not just faith, but euros.

“It’s not by chance that in Germany, Austria and Belgium that the movement is strongest,” says Belgian researcher Morelli, noting countries that levy church taxes, which France does not. “It’s also a struggle about subsidies the population must pay for a church that doesn’t represent them.”

The bigger worry, experts say, are plummeting rates of new baptisms. Half a century ago, for example, 90 percent of French children were baptized, said Sorbonne University religion professor Philippe Portier. Today, roughly one in three are.

“The church considers de-baptisms a very marginal phenomena and its strategy right now is to resist it,” Portier said. “It is much more active when it comes to reversing the drop in (new) baptisms — there it’s put in place a new evangelizing strategy.”

The parish at Paris’ historic Saint-Germain-des-Pres, for example, is offering a myriad of activities, from ski retreats to support networks for young professionals. At a recent evening youth Mass, the church was overflowing.

The parish priest, the Rev. Benoist de Sinety, is counting on faith, not numbers.

“What is striking today is that those who want to be Christian really want to be Christian,” he said. “I rejoice in the fact that people are free to choose.”

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A new study finds that atheists are among society’s most distrusted group, comparable even to rapists in certain circumstances.

Psychologists at the University of British Columbia and the University of Oregon say that their study demonstrates that anti-atheist prejudice stems from moral distrust, not dislike, of nonbelievers.

“It’s pretty remarkable,” said Azim Shariff, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and a co-author of the study, which appears in the current issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The study, conducted among 350 Americans adults and 420 Canadian college students, asked participants to decide if a fictional driver damaged a parked car and left the scene, then found a wallet and took the money, was the driver more likely to be a teacher, an atheist teacher, or a rapist teacher?

The participants, who were from religious and nonreligious backgrounds, most often chose the atheist teacher.

The study is part of an attempt to understand what needs religion fulfills in people. Among the conclusions is a sense of trust in others.

“People find atheists very suspect,” Shariff said. “They don’t fear God so we should distrust them; they do not have the same moral obligations of others. This is a common refrain against atheists. People fear them as a group.”

Shariff, who studies atheism and religion, said the findings provide a clue to combating anti-atheism prejudice.

“If you manage to offer credible counteroffers of these stereotypes, this can do a lot to undermine people’s existing prejudice,” he said. “If you realize there are all these atheists you’ve been interacting with all your life and they haven’t raped your children that is going to do a lot do dispel these stereotypes.”

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A teaching hospital will hire additional staff to help perform abortions after a group of nurses claimed they were forced to participate in the procedures despite religious objections.

“No nurse is compelled to have direct involvement in a procedure to which she or he objects based on his/her cultural values, ethics and/or religious beliefs,” Jeffrey Tolvin, a spokesman for the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey said in a statement on Friday (Dec. 2).

“At the same time, we needed to find a solution that is in the best interest of the patients we serve. We are therefore hiring additional staff who will provide care to our full complement of patients.”

In November, 12 nurses at UMDNJ filed suit, saying the hospital was forcing them to assist in the operations despite declared religious objections.

Aside from aiding doctors in the procedures, the nurses argued that post-operative patient care and administrative duties surrounding the procedures constituted involvement.

If upheld in court, the nurses’ claims could mean UMDNJ violated federal law, which bars institutions receiving federal dollars from forcing their staff members to assist in abortions.

“The university is in full compliance with all applicable state and federal laws,” the school said when the nurses brought suit. “Its position will be vindicated when the court gives this matter a full hearing.”

A hearing in federal district court was scheduled for Monday (Dec. 5). The Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the nurses, said only a court-approved agreement would mean the school “might finally be interested in following the law.”

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Penn State coaching legend Joe Paterno is out in the university’s burgeoning sex abuse scandal, and comparisons to the Roman Catholic Church’s own abuse scandals are in.

“The parallels are too striking to ignore. A suspected predator who exploits his position to take advantage of his young charges. The trusting colleagues who don’t want to believe it — and so don’t,” author Jonathan Mahler wrote in The New York Times.

“This was the dynamic that pervaded the Catholic clerical culture during its sexual abuse scandals, and it seems to have been no less pervasive at Penn State.”

The analogy is popular. But does it hold up to scrutiny? Yes, and no. Here are three ways in which the twin abuse scandals are similar, and three ways they are different.

SIMILARITIES

1. Sports is like a religion, with its rituals and incantations, rules and traditions, collective devotion and uniforms. Indeed, anthropologists say that like religion, athletic competition is one of the oldest communal impulses in human history, and today sports and religion mirror each other almost as much as they did in classical Greece.

To wit: a sign held by one Paterno supporter at a rally for the disgraced coach: “Two of my favorite ‘J’s’ in life: Jesus and Joe Pa.”

2. Whatever their bona fides as religions, Penn State and the Catholic Church are big, self-protective institutions. The cover-up is always as bad (or worse) as the crime, and Penn State leaders feared scandal — and probably harm to their own reputations — so much that they didn’t think about the welfare of the children. Same with so many bishops. And Boy Scout leaders. And teachers unions, and so on.

“The sort of instinct to protect the institution is very similar. And of course, in both cases, it backfires horribly. If your idea was to avoid a scandal, you sure failed,” Phil Lawler, a Catholic journalist in Boston, told The Associated Press.

That is why the public blamed bishops more than the predatory priests, and why so much anger has focused on Paterno rather than on alleged abuser Jerry Sandusky.

3. It took a grandjury to bring the Penn State abuse to light, just as it did (and continues to do) in the Catholic Church. Look at last month’s indictment of Bishop Robert Finn in Kansas City, Mo., for failing to report a priest suspected of childabuse, or the indictment last February of Monsignor William Lynn, a former top official in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia who is charged with covering up for abusive priests.

Institutions are not good at policing themselves. It is unclear how far the problem extends in college sports, and the church.

DIFFERENCES

1. Penn State has a system of accountability, however imperfect, because like any university, the school is governed by a board of trustees. In this case, the board tookrelatively swift action (albeit under severe pressure from the public and authorities) in part because if Penn State loses customers, it goes kaput.

The Catholic Church, meanwhile, believes that even the “gates of hell will not prevail” against it, and many church leaders embrace the “mustard seed” view of a smaller but more devout “saving remnant” that would be purified by suffering. In a reprise of the lesson of the Cross, they would “win by losing.” Needless to say, that’s not how universities, not to mention football teams, tend to see things.

What’s more, the pope is answerable to no one — except God.

2. Sports is not an actual religion. Sports does not have divine sanction, nor can its leaders make use of divine symbols and power to exploit children — and potentially turn them against the eternal salvation that those leaders say is the point of a religion’s existence. That is a higher order of bad. Sports consists of games in the first instance, and the last.

If anything, sports is more like a cult — closed in on itself, exalting personalities more than asystem or institution. Catholicism is actually a very decentralized community, and Catholics can hold their leaders in the same low regard that they have for politicians. That’s why you saw Catholics in Boston protesting to have Cardinal Bernard Law fired in 2002, while thousands of Penn State students rallied to let Paterno keep his job.

3. Penn State, and collegiate athletics as a whole, have not done as much as the Catholic Church to establish systematic safeguards for protecting children and educating students and staff about warning signs and best practices.

Of course, the Catholic Church has had a 10-year head start, and many safeguards were put in place after the fact. But sports experts note that there have been periodic sex scandals involving college coaches for years, and that bad behavior by college athletes — from sexual assault to bar brawls — is rampant. Yet there has been little focus on changing a culture that enables such behavior because college sports are, well, sacrosanct.

An ESPN investigation found that between 2002 and 2008, some 46 Penn State footballplayers faced 163 criminal charges, and 27 players were convicted of or pleaded guilty to a combined 45 counts.

In the end, it may be the sensationalism of the sexual abuse of boys by men that has driven coverage of both the Penn State story and the Catholic crisis. And that may reveal as much about American attitudes as it does about the abuse itself.

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An interesting video was posted on You Tube on Monday, September 12 called “Caring for the Lost at Vanderbilt.” If you haven’t seen it yet, you may want to before you read the rest of this.

The video opens with a young family driving around the fraternity houses near Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

According to the narrator, they are looking for a place to preach the Gospel. While dad drives, mom describes the scene as they drive past party after party with swarms of college students and grounds littered with beer cans. It is obvious that she is worried about the students’ safety as well as their souls.

Her heart is clearly in the right place. But then it gets a little weird. She describes the students as “drunk with the wine of this world” and states that if parents are planning on sending their children to this university, that they should repent.

About two minutes into the video the mom uses a microphone to shout out to the students that “no drunkard will enter the kingdom of heaven – you must repent.”

As you can imagine, the students aren’t very impressed. Most ignore the couple, but a few engage in conversations, but not conversions. I was relieved to see that they actually did park the car to talk to the students, but every other word they said was “repent.” The message was correct but the delivery was terrible or so it appears.

At the end of the video, there is a link to a website, cheapmissiontrips.com. When I visited there today, there was no mention of this particular video, however other videos were posted there and they all seem to feature Tabitha Lovell, an International Travel Specialist.

By visiting the website, you can tell that she, and her husband Kevin, really love the Lord and really believe in missions. She and her company, MKI Group Travel, provide missionaries discount airfare. The site has tips on how to become a missionary, on traveling and testimonies.

They have a heart for reaching the lost and they are doing a huge service in helping missionaries go abroad affordably. However, I suspect that they have better success reaching the lost overseas than in their hometown.

The scenes on this video reminded me of a local town’s Fourth of July parade that I attended this year. Before the parade began, a small crowd set up microphones and speakers on the corner sidewalks to tell the crowd that they would be going to hell if they didn’t repent of their sins.

The group wasn’t obnoxious, but I don’t think anyone was moved by their actions either. In fact, a few people clapped when they finished because they wouldn’t have to hear them preach anymore. In contrast, another church group offered up their church grounds after the parade in celebration of the holiday. They gave out hot dogs and had “bounce houses” for children to jump around in.

No preaching was involved, just a fun and friendly atmosphere. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I suspect that the latter was more impactful in reaching others for Christ.

At the end of the video a verse is posted from Ezekiel 33:9: “Nevertheless, if you warn the wicked from his way, he shall die in his iniquity’ but you have delivered your soul.”

I guess the Lovell’s and others are doing that, and this isn’t to say that Christians should just stand and watch the world go to hell in a hand basket, but I think God had something better in mind than just dumping the truth and running away.

Another verse in the Bible says, “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.” (Ephesians 4:15) and that some “perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” (2 Thessalonians 2:10) I wonder how many of those students “felt the love” as that couple drove by. How many are moved when they see the “Turn or Burn” bumper sticker on our cars? Is this is the good news?

So, what do you think? What’s the answer?

Originally here.

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The leading bidders for the Crystal Cathedral in Orange County appear to be a University and a Roman Catholic diocese, but a new buyer (unnamed in court documents) appears to be coming into the picture, among other bidders.

Meanwhile, Crystal Cathedral Ministry is still hoping to keep the cathedral and is trying to raise the funds through pledges and donations. It also announced that the campus is not for sale, putting it directly against its creditors committee.

The creditors committee allowed the cathedral to choose a buyer at a minimum purchase price of $50 million. However, failure of the church to cooperate may mean losing out on buyback options, and perhaps, having to leave the cathedral sooner that it was expecting to.

Front-runner bidders

Chapman University and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange are in stiff competition for the bankrupt Crystal Cathedral. Court documents that were filed last Tuesday also state that a third, unnamed buyer has emerged.

Bids have also been lodged by Hobby Lobby, a nationwide retailer of arts and crafts which is controlled by David Green, an evangelical Christian; and My Father’s House Church International, which is Norco-based. The documents did not mention who the new potential bidder is.

Crystal Cathedral, a 31-year-old church with 10,000 panels of glass, became known internationally through its Hour of Power television program. In October last year the ministry filed for bankruptcy after accumulating a $50 million debt.

The church, which lies in Garden Grove city, 30 miles from Los Angeles, was founded in 1955 by Rev. Robert Schuller and wife Arvella. They started out by renting a drive-in theater for services, and continued to grow and prosper until Robert Schuller retired in 2006. (See http://theundergroundsite.com/index.php/2011/07/crystal-cathedral-mulls-50-million-offer-from-roman-catholic-church-16749/ and http://theundergroundsite.com/index.php/2011/05/crystal-cathedral-sold-to-pay-off-creditors-16086/).

Diocese of Orange

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange upped its original bid of $50 million to $53.6 million. Crystal Cathedral’s ministry may also rent space temporarily, but would have to vacate after three years.

Stephen Bohannon, diocese spokesman, said the original plan of the diocese was to build a new cathedral which would have cost $100 million. However, they realized that they could cut expenses in half by simply purchasing the Crystal Cathedral.

Bohannon told Reuters that the slash in costs is part of the reason why Bishop Tod Brown and diocese officials made the offer. Also, “[Bishop Brown] feels very strongly that Crystal Cathedral should remain a place of worship.”

Chapman University

Chapman University, a rival bidder, upped its original bid of $46 million to $50 million, the minimum bid required by the creditors’ committee. The University is an affiliate of Disciples of Christ, a Protestant denomination.

The University is also offering the services of two individuals with “extensive experience in business, financial and operational strategy,” at no charge, a service valued at $500,000 annually.

Chapman also said it may lower the repurchase price from $23.5 million to $21 million if Crystal Cathedral is able to repurchase the property, and may consider a longer lease term to Crystal Cathedral than its original proposal of 15 years, but this would be subject to approval.

Church ministry wants to stay put

Crystal Cathedral ministry said less recently that they will try to raise $50 million so that they will not have to sell the cathedral. Sheila Coleman, director of the ministry and daughter of Robert Schuller made this announcement during service less than two weeks before.

Coleman said, “I believe with every fiber of my being that God turned the eyes of the world on Crystal Cathedral because God wants to make a big bold statement,” Reuters reported. “He wants the world to know that he is a God who still does miracles.”

The creditors committee, however, issued a warning that it would proceed with a sale even if the ministry is against it, court documents said. It is also possible that the final deal might not include provisions for repurchase or lease-back.

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Ergun Caner, the controversial religion professor at Liberty University, is leaving LU to join Arlington Baptist College in Texas, where he will serve as its provost and vice president.

Caner, the former president and dean of Liberty Theological Seminary was demoted when it was discovered that he was lying and exaggerating about his Muslim childhood, according to the Associated Baptist Press.

Arlington Baptist College, a fundamental bible Baptist institute, was founded in 1939 by J. Frank Norris and is affiliated with the World Baptist Fellowship. Caner, aside from serving as provost and vice president of academic affairs, will also teach theology, apologetics and church history, the ABP said.

Caner has coauthored many books, including “Why Churches Die,” “Unveiling Islam,” and “When Worldviews Collide.” He  was taken into Arlington on a unanimous vote from the board of directors of the college, Baptist Press said.

Ron Godwin, LU’s administrator said, “We wish Ergun the very best in his new assignment and would have been delighted to have him continue serving here. We will miss his contribution,” The News & Advance reported.

Of his new assignment, Caner said, “I am thrilled to be joining the Arlington Baptist College. This is an historic institution, founded by one of Christianity’s most courageous voices, Dr. J. Frank Norris,” ABP reported.

Norris, founder of Arlington Baptist College and the World Baptist Fellowship, was a Texas fundamentalist Baptist leader and one-time editor of the Baptist Standard. He was once called the “Texas Tornado” over a long-term feud with the Southern Baptists, ABP said.

Norris founded his own independent fundamentalist group, originally called the Pre-millennial Baptist Missionary Fellowship but renamed the World Baptist Fellowship after a split, ABP said.

Caner said, “The vision of President Moody is profoundly exciting — to train a generation of Christian warriors who are prepared for ministry on every level, intellectually and spiritually,” The News & Advance reported.

9/11 circuits

Caner rose to fame after 9/11 when he shared his testimony of being a trained jihadist terrorist before his conversion to Christianity in several speaking engagements and during the Southern Baptist Convention, ABP said.

However, blogs and news reports emerged that he was actually raised in Ohio. Liberty trustees investigated his case, and, among other things, reviewed recordings of Caner’s speeches, according to ABP.

LU determined that “factual statements … are self-contradictory.” In 2010 Caner was demoted after a committee headed by Godwin looked into the professor’s claim of having grown up Muslim and converted to Christianity as a teenager, The News & Advance said.

The committee determined that there seemed to be no doubt that Caner had converted to Christianity. However, Caner did make “factual statements that are self-contradictory,” and demoted Caner, giving him a one-year teaching contract, ABP said.

Caner often said he is a Turkish immigrant and said in speeches he gave in other states that he was trained as a teenager in Islamic jihad. However, documents of his parents’ divorce which are filed in an Ohio courthouse indicate otherwise, The News & Advance said, indicating that Caner was born in Sweden and the family moved to the U.S. when he was four years old.

Last fall, Caner taught two online cases, and in the spring taught two classes in LU.

Utmost confidence

President D.L. Moody of Arlington Baptist College presented Caner to the Texas school’s board of directors and said, “I have the utmost confidence in Dr. Ergun Caner,” according to The News & Advance.

Moody said, “I believe that he has the abilities, wisdom and passion to enhance the work and ministry of Arlington Baptist College as we prepare a ‘Generation of Giants for Jesus Christ.’ He shares the values that I have for biblical authority, evangelistic fervor, and godly example,” BP reported.

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A man from Portland, Ore., who has been afflicted with a spinal cord injury for four years is suddenly back on his feet after receiving experimental treatment that uses an electric stimulator, lending new hope for the paralyzed.

Rob Summers, 25, is now taking steps on a treadmill thanks to therapy that shows, surprisingly, that lower limb movement is possible without receiving signals from the brain, CBS News said.

The treatment lends hope to some five-and-a-half million others who are partially paralyzed from spinal cord injury, according to CBS News. Dr. Susan Harkema, who heads the experiment at the University of Louisville, said that while Summers’ progress is remarkable, They still have a long way to go.

Harkema, director of rehabilitation research at the University’s Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center told CBS News, “There’s technology that needs to be developed and more research, and testing it in other people. But it just opened up a whole new set of opportunities.”

Summers, the first spinal injury patient who was able to stand and move purposefully using an electric stimulator, told The Oregonian, “I hope my story will motivate others with spinal cord injuries and revitalize their hopes for the future.”

Whether or not the treatment can meaningfully improve daily life functioning, and whether or not Summers’ experience can be replicated in others, remains to be seen. But experts agree this is a landmark, more so as it is done without any brain signal and through electrical stimulation, The Oregonian reported.

Hit and run

Five years ago Summers was a student at Oregon State University and a pitcher in its baseball team. One night in July 2006 as he grabbed his duffel bag inside his car, a drunk driver crashed into him and sped off, The Oregonian said.

Summers recalls trying to crawl, collapsing and waking up the next day in a hospital. He told CBS News, “The car drove off, leaving me there with nothing and no help, no hope.”

Doctors said he was paralyzed from the chest down and he would never walk again. But Summers, who dreamt of playing baseball, trained for three years but still could not stand, walk independently, or move his legs, The Oregonian said.

Experiments on cats

Summers learned of an experiment in the University of Louisville that showed that cats with severed spinal cords could stand and take steps, as could rats, with the help of electrical stimulation.

Harkema and her team also pinpointed evidence that human spinal nerves can preserve some capability to control movement even after a disabling spinal injury. She wanted to see if electric stimulation could agitate the spinal nerves in a way that would promote standing and stepping, The Oregonian said.

Summers volunteered, and some 16 tiny electrodes were implanted directly over his lower spinal cord segments connected by wires under his skin that went to a unit as large as a small cell phone that was implanted over his hip. Through a wireless remote, electrical pulses were sent to the spine, The Oregonian said.

The devices are already in use to control chronic pain and cost from $20,000 to $57,000, with maintenance at $5,000 to $7,000, according to The Oregonian. The experiment was financed by the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, according to CBS News.

Summers told The Oregonian, “[I]t feels like a tingling that goes from my abs down to my toes. Once I got used to it was fine. It wasn’t painful or uncomfortable.”

Three days after implantation, both Summers and the research team were surprised that he could stand up unassisted. Harkema told The Oregonian, “This result was really unexpected.”

After 80 sessions and a period of seven months, Summers can take a few steps on a treadmill, has motor control in his toes, ankles, knees and hips. He cannot walk yet but with help, can take a few steps, The Oregonian said.

Other benefits noted by Harkema and her team was improved body temperature regulation, increased muscle mass, decreased body fat, bladder control and a greater sense of wellbeing in the patient, The Oregonian said.

The research has been published in the medical journal, Lancet. Susan Howley of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, who financed the experiment, told CBS News, “I think Christopher Reeve would be very, very pleased.”

Harkema told CBS News, “It was gratifying to know that decades of research by many scientists had reached a point where it might help people with paralysis,” adding, “A lot of scientific decisions went into (our decision). … We trained him intensely to make sure that there wasn’t any possibility of recovery before we took this next step.”

Summers told CBS News, “Now I can stand. I’ve gotten my confidence back to just go out in the public, and be out in the world again. As well as I work on standing for one hour a day, as well as voluntary movement. I can move my toes, ankles, knees and hips, all on command. And that’s just an amazing feeling to be able to get that back.” His next goal is to stand and walk “completely normally.”

Harkema said her goal is to be able to use these therapies for the mainstream market. She told CBS News, “An important aspect is that there’s knowledge we have now that can make incremental changes in people’s lives. And so we need to start there, and then just continue to learn more about the circuitry and how we can take advantage of it to improve function and people’s quality of life.”

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Homosexual students from Christian schools are rallying together to seek acknowledgment and acceptance of their sexual orientation, and to question the belief that homosexuality is a sin.

Homosexual organizations have been emerging, or trying to emerge, in Christian Evangelical colleges including Baylor University, Abilene Christian University, Belmont University and Harding University, among others, according to The New York Times.

Many members of these student organizations came to realize their sexual identities in college, but had gone through inner processes and struggles when they were younger, as shown by one online publication from Harding University which tells of the personal experiences of several gay students from the school.

A 2010 Pew survey indicated that Millennials (born after 1980) are in agreement with allowing same-sex marriage to be legalized by 53 percent vs 39 percent, the highest margin since 1928, The Christian Post said.

Another study by Lifeway Research in 2009 surveyed 1,200 Millenials and showed that six out of 10 young adults are agreeable to same-sex marriage, according to The Christian Post.

Unstoppable force

Adam R. Short, an openly gay student at Baylor University told The New York Times that he had tried, unsuccessfully, to get the campus to ratify a club that would dwell on homophobia and sexuality.

Considered the largest Baptist university in the country with 15,000 students, Baylor did not allow its students to participate in a sexuality forum. Lori Fogleman, university spokeswoman told The New York Times, “Baylor expects students not to participate in advocacy groups promoting an understanding of sexuality that is contrary to biblical teaching.”

Despite this some 50 Baylor students meet regularly at the online site, Sexual Identity Forum, and are hopeful that they will eventually be give formal status on campus, The New York Times said.

The SIF forum states, “Baylor University welcomes all students into a safe and supportive environment in which to discuss and learn about a variety of issues, including those of human sexuality,” which is picked up from the University website.

The SIF website said it “seeks to open the discussion about sexual and gender issues.” Its stated purpose is to “start dialogue about important issues concerning gender and sexuality including violence against LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) students; suicide among LGBT students; homophobia concerning students; and current political events regarding gender/sexuality issues.”

Abilene Christian University, Texas has also disallowed the forming of Gay-Straight Alliance.

Jean-Noel Thompson, university vice president told The New York Times, “We want to engage these complex issues, and to give help and guidance to students who are struggling with same-sex attraction. But we are not going to embrace any advocacy for gay identity.”

Harding University, Arkansas blocked access to an online publication which featured the gay outings of university alumni and students. David B. Burks, president of Harding told students, “[I]t was important for us to block the Web site because of what it says about Harding, who we are, and what we believe,” The New York Times said.

Recently the first annual Day of Dialogue was held among evangelicals to talk about God’s “best plan for sexuality and relationships.” The event was organized by Cadi Cushman and Focus on the Family, The Christian Post said.

The purpose of The Day of Dialogue was to help students to understand “God’s deep love for us and what the Bible really says about His redemptive design for marriage and sexuality,” according to The Christian Post.

The Day of Dialogue was also launched in response to The Day of Silence which occurred April 15 and was organized by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, The Christian Post said.

Cushman told The Christian Post, “We hope this event will give them confidence that their faith speaks into the hot topics in the culture of today.”

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