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 2011
Annual Conference
Model Resolutions
(pdf
version) (Word
doc)
March
2011 Newsletter
Speakers
Articles
News Update
Rev. Paul Stallsworth, along with his wife Marsha, went to Washington, DC on March 11, 2010 to hand-deliver the following
attached letter to all 435 US
House of Representative members.
Read
Letter
Lifewatch
Special Appeal
ELECTION
PRAYER FOR LIFE
O God, we acknowledge you
today as Lord, not only of individuals, but of nations and
governments.
We thank you for the privilege of being able to organize
ourselves politically and of knowing that political loyalty
does not have to mean disloyalty to you. We thank you for
your law, which our Founding Fathers acknowledged and
recognized as higher than any human law. We thank you for
the opportunity, that each election puts before us, to
exercise our solemn duty not only to vote, but to influence
countless others to vote, and to vote correctly.
Lord, we pray that your people may be awakened. Let them
realize that while politics is not their salvation, their
response to you requires that they be politically active.
Awaken your people to know that they are not called to be a
sect fleeing the world, but rather a community of faith
renewing the world. Awaken them that the same hands lifted
up to you in prayer are the hands that pull the lever in the
voting booth; that the same eyes that read your Word are the
eyes that read the names on the ballot; that your baptized
people do not cease to be Christians when they enter the
voting booth. Awaken your people to a commitment to justice,
to the sanctity of marriage and the family, to the dignity
of each individual life, and to the truth that human rights
begin when human lives begin, and not one moment later.
Lord, we rejoice today that we are citizens of your Kingdom.
May that make us all the more committed to being faithful
citizens on earth. We ask this through Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen. (original slightly edited)
--Father Frank Pavone/Priests
for Life/www.priestsforlife.org
The Honorable
Ben Nelson
United States Senate
720 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
18 January 2010
Dear Senator Nelson:
New Year's greetings to your staff and to you.
As fellow United Methodists and as leaders of the Taskforce
of United Methodists on Abortion and Sexuality (TUMAS), we
write to you. Also known as Lifewatch , this pro-life
witness within The United Methodist Church has, for over 22
years, advanced and defended the God-given dignity of each
human person. From the beginnings of Lifewatch until the
present, our Advisory Board has included prominent bishops
and distinguished seminary professors.
We have been very proud of your public association with
Democrats for Life of America, your principled pro-life
positions, and, until recently, your courageous attempts to
remove taxpayer funding of abortion from the proposed reform
of health care, against intense pressure from the White
House and from other Democratic Party leaders. Also, we
applaud your success in attaching to the US Senate's health
care bill additional support for pregnancy, adoption, and
parenting.
However, we are disappointed by your final negotiations on
abortion, in the Senate's health care bill, late last month.
The new abortion provisions fall short of offering strong,
permanent guarantees that no taxpayer funds will be used to
directly or indirectly subsidize medically unnecessary
abortions. The abortion provisions now in the Senate's bill
include circuitous accounting procedures that can be used to
(falsely) claim that taxpayers will not be forced to
directly pay for other people's abortions.
The Senate's health care bill is unacceptable -- to us, to
many if not most United Methodists, and to the clear
majority of Americans -- since it would have the effect of
facilitating, and thus increasing, the incidence of abortion
in our society. Furthermore, we are very concerned about the
Senate bill's failure to include the House bill's conscience
protections for health care providers who do not want to be
coerced into participation in abortion. Finally, we are
disturbed to read reports that your office "shut out" input
from pro-life leaders during final negotiations on the final
abortion language.
We understand that, in recent weeks, you have been the
target of lobbying efforts by some United Methodist clergy
and laity urging you to support the health care reform bill
even if it means compromising your pro-life principles.
While these individuals are certainly free to express their
opinions to you, you should know that they do not speak for
all United Methodists. Through our extensive experience in
United Methodist congregations and organizations, we can
assure you that many, if not most, United Methodists in
Nebraska and in the United States share our concerns.
We understand the need to address the problem of the
deplorably high number of people in our nation without
health insurance. However, the first principle of the
General Rules of The United Methodist Church, given by John
W esley to the early Methodists, is "Do no harm."
With this principle in mind, as negotiations and votes on
health care reform continue, we strongly urge you to
reconsider your position and to work with pro-life leaders,
including Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), to ensure that the health
care bill that is passed will: (1) exclude any direct or
indirect federal support for elective abortions; (2) exclude
any provisions that may otherwise encourage or facilitate
abortions; and (3) include strong conscience protections.
We respectfully urge you to apply this principle, "Do no
harm," to your pivotal work in the shaping of health care
reform. If you do, we are ready, willing, and eager to offer
whatever moral, prayerful, or other support we can.
In Christ,
Rev. Paul T. Stallsworth
Lifewatch President, and Pastor
St. Peter's United Methodist Church
111 Hodges Street
Morehead City, NC 28557
252.726.2175
paulstallsworth@nccumc.org
Mr. John Lomperis
Lifewatch Advisory Board
Harvard Divinity School
28 Forest Street
Somerville , MA 02143
202.494.2565
johnlomperis@yahoo.com
ECUMENICAL
GROUP: CARE FOR TERRI SCHIAVO, DO NOT KILL HER
Presentation to the Study Committee
INTRODUCTION
Thank you for the invitation to address you, the Study
Committee on the Worldwide Nature of The United Methodist
Church. It is a privilege, an honor, and a rare opportunity
to be with you and to work with you.
My name is Paul Stallsworth. An elder in the North Carolina
Conference, I pastor St. Peter's United Methodist Church in
Morehead City on the coast, serve as the president of the
Taskforce of United Methodists on Abortion and Sexuality,
and edit the quarterly newsletter Lifewatch, which many of
you receive.
The task before us, this afternoon, is great -- especially
so soon after lunch. I trust that this presentation will not
facilitate any early afternoon naps...
As you know well, the summer of 2008 placed a
denominational- reorganizational plan -- in the form of
twenty-three (23) constitutional amendments, pertaining to
the worldwide nature of The United Methodist Church --
before all the Annual Conferences across the church. Based
on the reported votes to date, that plan will apparently not
be ratified.
It is important for you, the Study Committee, to step back,
consider why the Annual Conferences voted as they apparently
voted, gather additional information, and set out on a new
course for denominational reorganization. In other words,
this committee should not simply rewrite the constitutional
amendments that were placed before the Annual Conferences in
2008. To simply edit the presumably rejected amendments, and
return them to the 2012 General Conference and perhaps the
Annual Conferences, would squander the attention, time, and
money of The United Methodist Church. Something more
faithful to God and the Gospel, more thoughtful, and more
courageous is required of this Study Committee.
In what follows, I will: (I) place my proposal for this
Study Committee on the table; (II) explain what, in The
United Methodist Church, makes this proposal necessary; and
(III) revisit the proposal ....Read
more>>
DYK
“Extra” “Mr. Obama has promised for
months that the health care overhaul would not provide
federal money to pay for elective abortions, but White House
officials have declined to spell out what he means. …. At
least 31 House Democrats have signed various recent letters
to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, urging her to allow a
vote on a measure to restrict use of the subsidies to pay
for abortion, including 25 who joined more than 100
Republicans on a letter delivered Monday.”
Call 202-224-3121 and ask for your
Senator
or
Representative
by name.
Source:
“Abortion Fight Complicates Debate on Health Care,” by
David D. Kirkpatrick, Sept. 29, 2009
What
Does God Think
About America’s Health Care Debate?
 
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