John Jay was a Founding Father of the United States. As a patriot and diplomat from the Colony of New York, Jay eventually became the first Chief Justice of the United States appointed by George Washington. Jay was a Christian and believed that God was involved in the fabric of his creation. He served as vice-president (1816–21) and president (1821–27) of the American Bible Society and believed that the most effective way of ensuring world peace was through propagation of the Christian gospel. He believed that Christians must become involved in the politics of their nation. “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers,” he once said, “and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”

My atheist friend told me the main reason he doesn’t believe in God has to do with all the evil he sees in the world. “A good God,” he says, “would not allow all kinds of evil to exist. Because evil exists, there can be no God.”

The question I asked my friend was this, “How do you know evil exists? By qualifying God as good is to make a moral judgment. Defining evil based on the notion of good is to admit that God also exists!”

"Can a person be good without believing in God?" asked my atheist friend. He said that human beings need not believe in a deity or belong to any religious group in order to be good or act morally. He continued to say that the idea of the doing good preceded belief in a god, for religion evolved from the imagination of ancient man. In fact, he believed that the concept of god is alien to the algorithm of human goodness and morality. Humans already have a sense of moral right or wrong, for moral rectitude is innate within the human spirit.

Numerous early Christian martyrs were named Valentine, one being Saint Valentine of Rome who was a priest martyred about AD 269 and buried on the Via Flaminia, the Roman road that led to and from Rome over the Apennine Mountains. His relics are said to be at the Church of Saint Praxed in Rome and also at Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, Ireland—the result of a gift by Pope Gregory XVI.

It’s the New Year—2015. Time does fly, especially for us older folks.  With the New Year comes the expression, “Out with the old and in with the new.” Why? We just celebrated Christmas, and we wouldn’t throw that away. Christmas reminds us of the love of God that extended to us even while we were yet sinners. The joy of knowing that should carry us into the New Year and beyond. Christ never leaves us, which means we can face the coming year as a new adventure, for if Christ is for us, who can be against us? Romans 8:31. The Hebrews had an expression of “walking backwards into the future.” They didn’t know what lay ahead, but they could look back and see how the Lord brought them through the difficulties of the past. One of the reasons they piled stones at strategic places was to remind them what God had previously done for them. The stones also served as an encouragement to walk boldly into the unknown, knowing that God who had brought them through the past will help them face the future.

I watched the Concert for Valor last night on Veterans Day and was appalled. As a combat veteran in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War I was looking forward to a concert that would honor our veterans and active duty servicemen. Aside from a couple patriotic songs and short video bios on military heroes, the concert was neither honoring nor patriotic.

Queen Elizabeth in ascending to the thrown of Great Britain succeeded her half sister, known as Bloody Mary. Mary, a Roman Catholic, killed and outlawed hundreds of reformers. Elizabeth was Protestant and established Anglicanism as the religion of England. She, however, would not tolerate other religions, like that of the Puritans and Separatists. The Pilgrims were a group of people who strove for religious freedom and worshipped quietly in Scooby, England. Once King James I (a Stuart) succeeded Elizabeth, their existence was tested, for James proclaimed, “I shall make them conform or I shall harry them out of the land.” So, the Pilgrims as a group fled to Holland where they could worship in freedom.

I grew up outside of Plymouth in the land of the Pilgrims. I even attended school or played ball with some of the descendants of our first settlers—Brewster, Bradford, and Standish. Since November is the month of Thanksgiving, I thought I would list 10 little known facts or trivia about the Pilgrims. There are questions at the end of each paragraph, which may be used at Thanksgiving as a game of Pilgrim Trivia.

Historians typically date the start of the Protestant Reformation on October 31, 1517 with the publication of Martin Luther’s “95 Theses.” The key ideas of the Reformation were: (1) A call to purify the church; and (2) The Bible, not tradition or church councils, is the sole source of spiritual authority.

Martin Luther (1483-1546) was an Augustinian monk and university professor in Wittenberg when he composed his “95 Theses,” which included his protest against the pope’s sale of indulgences. He initially wanted to encourage renewal from within the church by advancing what Augustine had taught in the late 300s—that the Bible was the central authority to discern the will of God and that salvation was granted by faith alone, which meant that good works and the purchase of indulgences were unnecessary--this would not be the result.

Now that September is upon us and children are back in school, the yearly routine begins again. We get caught up with all the activities, the seasonal holidays, and the church calendar. What we normally neglect is thinking about our neighbors and inviting them to church. Why is it so hard for us to ask another to the church we dearly love?