Here is Dr. Russell Moore on God, the Gospel and Glenn Beck.

(CNSNews.com) – The cleric who wants to build a mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero claims that ideas from his book were incorporated into President Obama’s landmark Cairo address to the Muslim world last year by one of the drafters of the speech.

Feisal Abdul Rauf made the remarks during two media interviews in Egypt last February.

White House staffers involved in drafting Obama’s speech, according to media reports, included speechwriter Ben Rhodes, political advisor David Axelrod, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and Rashad Hussain, a deputy associate counsel later appointed by the president as special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

In the interviews in Egypt, Rauf referred to his 2004 book What’s Right with Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West (later reprinted as What’s Right with Islam is What’s Right With America). He specifically mentioned chapter six. Read the story here.

While the nation has been focused on a proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero, a mosque has been functioning just four blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks with rumored plans to build even closer to the spot that once housed the World Trade Center.

The mosque, the Masjid Manhattan, recently boasted of plans to construct a “House of Allah” next to the World Trade Center, exclaiming on its website, “Help us raise the flag of ‘LA ILLAHA ILLA ALLAH’ in downtown Manhattan!”

The Masjid Manhattan has been holding classes at 20 Warren Street, four blocks from Ground Zero. The mosque also holds prayer services several times a day at a cramped location at 384 Broadway, eleven blocks from the former World Trade Center site. Read the story here.

President Obama’s support for the construction of a mega-mosque and Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan has sparked public outrage and bipartisan condemnation. The controversial plan would place a 13-story mosque where Islamic terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people on 9/11. On Sunday, August 22nd, the Coalition to Honor Ground Zero rallied thousands of patriotic Americans near the World Trade Center site to protest the building of a mosque way too close to hallowed ground.

With the rumblings of hundreds of motorcycles coming down West Broadway in lower Manhattan, a dazzling combination of construction workers, firefighters, veterans, 9/11 families and first responders, civil and human rights leaders, women’s rights advocates, and residents of the Ground Zero neighborhood united for an exciting rally of speeches, protest songs, and patriotic music at the Ground Zero mosque site.

The message at the rally was clear: Do not give violent Islamic jihadists a moral and symbolic victory by building a mosque on hallowed ground.

“Hard Hat Pledge” workers were in attendance at the rally. They have promised not to work or take part in the construction of a mosque near ground zero. Moreover, firefighters, veterans, the families of 9/11 victims, first responders, human rights workers, women’s rights leaders, and residents of the Ground Zero neighborhood participated in this morning’s rally at the northeast corner of West Broadway and Church Street at Park Place in Manhattan.

“This Ground Zero mega-mosque would not only defile hallowed ground, but it would be seen as a permanent symbol of violent Islamic victory in the heart of Manhattan,” said Tim Brown, firefighter who was at the World Trade Center on 9/11 — he lost 93 friends that day. “The American people have rejected the Ground Zero mosque, and it’s now time for our elected representatives to demonstrate the same wisdom by stopping this provocative and insulting construction plan from becoming a reality.”

Andy Sullivan, union worker and creator of the Hard Hat Pledge, added:

“Enough is enough. The middle class has spoken and the people don’t want the mosque. Jihadists have a long history of constructing mosques as monuments of victory over those they have conquered. We will not allow the building of this symbol of Jihadist victory on the ashes of fallen Americans. Simple decency should govern this decision.”

The rally-goers, including many 9/11 families and first responders, stood in the rain for nearly two hours to hear extraordinary speeches and to form a “citizen army” to launch the American Reclamation Movement, a new civil and human rights initiative to stand up for all we cherish: our liberty, our system of justice, our sense of equality of all men and women under the law.

Speakers included:

· Tim Brown, firefighter who was on the scene at 9/11 and lost 93 friends, head of The Bravest
· Andy Sullivan, Blue Collar Corner, creator of the Hardhat Pledge not to build the Ground Zero Mosque
· Dr. Herbert London, president of the Hudson Institute and resident of the Ground Zero neighborhood
· Debra Burlingame, from 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America and Keep America Safe
· Beth Gilinsky, Coalition to Honor Ground Zero and Women United International
· Simon Deng, former Slave of Islam and leader of Sudan Freedom Walk
· City Councilman Dan Halloran, who lost a nephew in the 9/11 attacks
· Shera Samson, singer/songwriter of protest music sang her original song “Just Pretend That You Don’t Know”
· Tony LoBianco, actor
· Robert Lawrence, attorney
· Frank Gaffney, Center for Security Policy
· Stuart Kaufman, director, Alliance for Interfaith Resistance and a member of the Patriot Guard. Stuart was one of the bikers who rode from Shanksville to the Pentagon to Ground Zero
· James Lafferty of the Virginia anti-Shariah Task Force
· Tenor Daniel Rodriguez, “the singing cop”, sang “God Bless the USA”, “You Will Not Walk Alone”, and “God Bless America”
· Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president, Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, who is fighting the Tennessee mosque
· Andrea Lafferty, Traditional Values Coalition
· Bruce Blakeman: Bruce lost his nephew, a US Army Veteran and a Court Officer who was rescuing victims from tower 2 when it collapsed
· Tom Trento, Florida Security Council
· Trey Parker sang his original song about stopping the Ground Zero Mosque.
The Coalition to Honor Ground Zero organized this event with the participation and endorsement of The Bravest; 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America; Blue Collar Corner; Women United International; Center for Security Policy; Stop Shariah Now; ACT! For America and ACT! Manhattan; Congress on Racial Equality; Alliance for Interfaith Resistance; Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam; Sudan Freedom Walk; Proclaim Justice to the Nations, Dr. Herbert London of the Hudson Institute; North Country Patriots; Victory Baptist Church of the Bronx; Lori Lowenthal Marcus, Z Street; Florida Security Council; The Peace through Strength Institute; Free the First Amendment Committee; V-USA – Veterans United to Save America; New York City Firefighters Hockey Team; Christians and Jews United for Israel; and many other organizations and leaders, as well as local residents living in the Ground Zero area.

Text and videos of speeches and other rally materials will be posted at www.stop911mosque.com.

TO ADD YOUR NAME TO the COALITION: stop911mosque@gmail.com

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The Coalition to Honor Ground Zero is a network of leaders and organizations of all backgrounds that share a profound concern about the proliferation of terrorism and radical mosques, the encroaching stealth jihad, and the imposition of harsh Shariah law across the globe. We believe in freedom of worship, but also are aware that a number of mosques have been revealed as veritable “Trojan Horses,” masquerading as places of worship when they in fact have proved to be sources of jihadist activities and terror plots against America. The coalition is dedicated to investigating, exposing and standing up to such mosques in our midst, as well as to preserving our freedoms and protecting our nation from harm. In modern times, a “Trojan Horse” has come to mean a trick in which a supposed gift or peaceable action is presented with the purpose of enticing a target into allowing a mortal enemy into an otherwise secure location.

‘How can we stop the oil gusher?” may have been the question of the summer for most Americans. Yet for many evangelical pastors and leaders, the leaking well is nothing compared to the threat posed by an ongoing gusher of a different sort: Young people pouring out of their churches, never to return.

As a 27-year-old evangelical myself, I understand the concern. My peers, many of whom grew up in the church, are losing interest in the Christian establishment.

Recent statistics have shown an increasing exodus of young people from churches, especially after they leave home and live on their own. In a 2007 study, Lifeway Research determined that 70% of young Protestant adults between 18-22 stop attending church regularly.

Statistics like these have created something of a mania in recent years, as baby-boomer evangelical leaders frantically assess what they have done wrong (why didn’t megachurches work to attract youth in the long term?) and scramble to figure out a plan to keep young members engaged in the life of the church.

Increasingly, the “plan” has taken the form of a total image overhaul, where efforts are made to rebrand Christianity as hip, countercultural, relevant. As a result, in the early 2000s, we got something called “the emerging church”—a sort of postmodern stab at an evangelical reform movement. Perhaps because it was too “let’s rethink everything” radical, it fizzled quickly. But the impulse behind it—to rehabilitate Christianity’s image and make it “cool”—remains. Read the column here.

“Bye-bye church. We’re busy.” That’s the message teens are giving churches today.

Only about one in four teens now participate in church youth groups, considered the hallmark of involvement; numbers have been flat since 1999. Other measures of religiosity — prayer, Bible reading and going to church — lag as well, according to Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif., evangelical research company. This all has churches canceling their summer teen camps and youth pastors looking worriedly toward the fall, when school-year youth groups kick in. Read the story here.

“…the great battle for the truth is waged within the framework of the visible church, that our enemy is within, the enemy has infiltrated the church. The tares have been sown amidst the wheat. Satan has disguised himself as an angel of light. His ministers are also disguised as angels of light. They have infiltrated successfully into the church always and no different today and they sow damning lies at the very heart of the Christian church. The visible church and the invisible church are two different entities. The visible church is that which bears the name of Christianity in the name of Christ. The invisible church is Christ’s true and redeemed people. And so we have to be discerning and we have to battle for the truth inside the very realm called Christendom. So we’ve been calling our study the long war on the truth, the truth war. And we have noted that this is one form of apostasy and one very, very dangerous deadly, penetrating subtle deception and effective form of apostasy. That apostasy which occurs inside the church and remains there to pollute the church and to diminish people’s confidence in the true gospel.

So we’ve been talking about this matter of defectors from the faith, those who apostatize from the faith. Some leave the church, others remain. And all of us, I think, who have been Christians for any length of time have experienced this matter of defection, this matter of rebellion, this matter of people exposed to the truth, even confessing or professing the truth who abandon the truth and turn away from Christ. We have all known people who have professed to be Christians and profess to believe in Jesus Christ, who have appeared to love the Lord and love the church and to respond to His truth, who had at some point in their lives have utterly and completely abandoned that. And now are living as none of the Scripture were true and as if the gospel was a lie and Christ was not the Savior and hell is either a fabrication or a more desirable place than heaven. Those people fall into the category of apostates, defectors from the faith. You have to know it to defect from it, to reject it. Read the entire sermon here at Grace to You.

Souter’s address deserves a serious reckoning in courtrooms across America, but it can also be applied to the world of religion (from whence it may well have sprung), and not only for its Niebuhrian call to give up on childish illusions of certainty and unchangeability.

Even more than the Constitution, which was written by a group of men over a span of months, the Bible, which was written by many different voices over millennia, is (to borrow from Souter) a “pantheon of values.” Moreover, just as there are Constitutional originalists who read passages from the Constitution as absolute, there are Biblical fundamentalists who read individual passages from scripture as absolute. Souter is not one of them, in part because he is steeped in Episcopal tradition, which has historically resisted the “proof text” method of fundamentalists in the name of reading the Bible as a whole.

So one way of reading this commencement speech, which argues against piecemeal interpretations of Constitutional passages, is as an application of those liberal Protestant principles to questions of Constitutional law.

In case you wonder where the author stands, here’s his bio:

Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of “God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World,” is a regular CNN Belief Blog contributor.

An Anglican priest in Toronto has become the center of controversy after she gave a communion wafer to a dog during a religious service.

The Rev. Marguerite Rea apologized to congregants on Sunday for giving the wafer last month to Trapper, a 4-year-old German Shepherd-Rhodesian Ridgeback mix, the Toronto Star reported. Story at the Columbus Dispatch.