July (Web-only) 2002

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Jesse Ventura accidentally proclaims "Christian Heritage Week"
On Wednesday, the Minnesota governor's office filed a proclamation with the Secretary of State's office declaring a week in October "Christian Heritage Week." Then it tried to take it back. "Somehow it got in the wrong pile," Ventura's spokesman told the Associated Press. "It would not have been approved."

Too bad, says the Secretary of State's spokesman: "There is no deproclamatizing. Once it's filed, it's filed … It's not like every time they send something we call over and ask, 'Did you mean it?'"

There was plenty of reason to think that Gov. Jesse Ventura didn't mean it—he'd already called religion "a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers," and earlier this month drew fire from religious conservatives by granting an atheist group's request to declare July 4 "Indivisible Day."

The governor's office says it will send Christian Heritage Ministries (which campaigned for the Christian Heritage Week declaration) a certificate of recognition—and an apology for accidentally issuing it.

Religious morality, not laws, will change business ethics
In a Washington Post piece Tuesday, Prison Fellowship founder (and Christianity Todaycolumnist) Charles Colson responded to the paper's editorial assertion that "it is naive to suppose that business can be regulated by some kind of national honor code."

"Watergate did not happen for want of laws," said Colson, who served seven months in prison for his involvement in the scandal.

What fools we are when we think we can legislate away human immorality. We certainly need laws, but I stand as living proof that the cure comes not from laws and statutes but from the transforming of the human heart—the embracing ...