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Is your church looking for a healthy living project?

Churches across North Carolina are preparing to participate in the first African American Prostate Cancer Awareness on Sept. 24. This initiative augments National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month during September, which is also Cancer Awareness Month.

"African American churches traditionally have educated congregations on health issues impacting the African American community, and the program taps into the faith community's influence," says the Rev. Ronald J. Weatherford. Weatherford is the founder of Nia's Ark, a High Point-based ministry that has been raising health awareness in churches since 1999.

The goal is to provide education and encourage testing among African American men. Prostate cancer is highly treatable if detected in its early stages.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified 17 North Carolina counties as leading the world in prostate cancer mortality rates. And African American men die at twice the rate of white men.

Gov. Michael Easley has

endorsed this initiative, a partnership among Nia's Ark, the Carolina Community Network, the N.C. Office of Minority Health, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity and the National Cancer Institute.

To participate in the first African American Prostate Cancer Awareness Sunday, congregations should contact Nia's Ark at 689-3605 or niaskark@aol.com.

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If you haven't been on The Front Pew lately, here's some of what you've missed:

Posted:

See never-before exhibited fragments of Genesis and Deuteronomy in an exhibit created specifically for the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences.

Comments:

View from Here said:

This is in fact an offensive, biased and misleading exhibit, in which the current state of research on the Dead Sea Scrolls has been carefully distorted to cater to a Christian perspective.

In a word, the Raleigh museum (which is run by the N.C. Department of the Environment) agreed to downplay and conceal the evidence brought to light by a major group of secular-minded, Jewish researchers who, over the past decade, have rejected the old "Essene" theory of scroll origins, and to physically exclude them from participating in the lecture series accompanying the exhibit.

Harold said:

I have never heard such nonsense - the government doesn't have the right to present ancient documents? Teaching the history of the Essenes who nourished

Christ is like displaying a giant cross on government property? America is a religious nation, founded by Christians. We respect your freedom to believe anything you like.

But don't go telling us we don't have the right to inform the public about the history of Christianity.

Jeffrey said:

I was shocked to learn that (professor Norman) Golb and (archaeologist Yizhak) Magen have not been invited to lecture at an exhibit of this importance. Jodi Magness, whose work on Qumran is extremely weak, will undoubtedly attack Magen in her lecture as she has done elsewhere (egged on, incidentally, by the laughter of encouraging audiences); Magen deserves the opportunity to respond in full to whatever she says.

The one exhibit where Golb has been invited so far was in Kansas City, where the museum director said the decision was necessary for scientific reasons.

Contact Nancy H. McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com