tinpra | Entries tagged with christendom

The supreme court hears cases on same-sex marriage today, to determine whether California's Prop 8 and the Fed's Defense of Marriage Act are constitutional. Listening to detractors of both on news radio (but curiously no supporters) say over & over that same-sex couples should have the same right marry made me wonder if we, people, have the right to change what the word, and consequently the institution of, marriage means.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts, if you have any.

"Disclaimer": I support traditional marriage. I also support open discussion.

Posted via m.livejournal.com.

By Kyle Beshears

Last month I stumbled upon an article about an atheistic “church service” in London. I didn’t even read the whole thing before I decided I had to go.

The Sunday Assembly, as the group is called, meets once a month at The Nave in North London for “anybody searching for a sense of community, to meet and ‘turn good intentions into action.’”

It is, all things considered, an atheistic church.

Yes. A church for atheists. ( Read the rest at Christian Post Blogs: Guest Views)

Very interesting blog post, with some of the most reasonable and calm comments I've ever seen anywhere on the web.

If we are declared 99.9% righteous, some verses of the Bible would have to be rewritten. Like Isaiah 1:18, which might then read: "'Come now, and let us reason together,' says the Lord, 'though your sins are as scarlet, they will be light pink.'"

Nonsense! The promise of sins forgiven is all or nothing. Eighty percent won't cut it. . . . ~Charles R Swindoll

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

CAIRO — The headline screamed from a venerable liberal newspaper: Coptic Christians had abducted a young Muslim and tattooed her with a cross. “Copts kidnap Raghada!”

“They tied me up with ropes, beat me with shoes, shaved my hair,” Raghada Salem Abdel Fattah, 19, declared, “and forced me to read Christian psalms!”

Like many similar stories proliferating here since the revolution, Ms. Abdel Fattah’s kidnapping could not be confirmed. But for members of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority, the sensational headline — from a respected publisher, no less — served to validate their fear that the Egyptian revolution had made their country less tolerant and more dangerous for religious minorities. The Arab Spring initially appeared to open a welcoming door to the dwindling number of Christian Arabs who, after years of feeling marginalized, eagerly joined the call for democracy and rule of law. But now many Christians here say they fear that the fall of the police state has allowed long-simmering tensions to explode, potentially threatening the character of Egypt, and the region.

“Will Christians have equal rights and full citizenship or not?” asked Sarkis Naoum, a Christian commentator in Beirut, Lebanon. A surge of sectarian violence in Cairo — 24 dead, more than 200 wounded and three churches in flames since President Hosni Mubarak’s downfall — has turned Christian-Muslim tensions into one of the gravest threats to the revolution’s stability. But it is also a pivotal test of Egypt’s tolerance, pluralism and the rule of law. The revolution has empowered the majority but also opened new questions about the protection of minority rights like freedom of religion or expression as Islamist groups step forward to lay out their agendas and test their political might.

( Read the rest at the New York Times online )

The leaders of 17 unofficial Christian churches in China have appealed to political leaders to protect their right to worship.

A petition was delivered to parliament demanding an investigation into the treatment of Shouwang church members.

China's constitution guarantees freedom of worship but dozens of church members have been arrested in recent months.

Of China's estimated 70m Christians, about 50m worship with unregistered groups known as "house" churches.

The rest attend government-approved churches.

(Read the rest at the BBC online.)

If you look at the related news stories you'll see this kind of thing isn't new news. PBS also looked at Christians in China, at the official vs. unofficial churches, and the persecution of the latter.

Christians in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, are holding a protest vigil near Tahrir Square following an attack on two churches in which 12 people died.

More than 180 were wounded in clashes on Saturday after conservative Muslims attacked a church in the Imbaba area.

Protesters have gathered outside the country's state television, accusing the army of failing to protect them.

Egypt's army says more than 190 people detained after the violence will face military trials.

The ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces called the move a "deterrent" against further violence.

Egypt's justice minister Abdel Aziz al-Gindi has warned that those who threaten the country's security will face "an iron fist". ( Read the rest at the BBC online )

There was more of this stuff going on around Christmas. I still have the links saved to my email to post but I was too mentally worn out to do much of anything (as you may have noticed). If you want to read about the previous problems going on with the Coptic church in Egypt, the BBC has links to their earlier stories.

Ruling won't stop National Day of Prayer this year

and

Justice Denied For Christians As Counsellor Refused Right To Appeal

opinions, on the first one at least, later. gotta run!

EDIT
So Mom actually told me about the National Day of Prayer ruling the other day...maybe Sunday. If you don't know, US District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled that the National Day of Prayer, with its Presidential Proclamation, is unconstitutional; it infringes on the rights of others who do not wish to pray and causes the state to unlawfully promote religion. I can't find the exact quote from the Judge, and so I'm not sure if she says it's actually unconstitutional, but I believe she does. However, here's the actual quote from the first amendment as found on the National Archives' website: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

As many of you know, it's the very first line of the first amendment to the Constitution (i.e. the Bill of Rights). As many of you also know, the term "separation of church and state" is not found in either the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. It's found in some of Thomas Jefferson's writings. I'm pretty sure I've argued the finer points of this with Katya before, but to be very technical it doesn't exist (something another judge pointed out a number of years ago, now). I won't disagree that the sentiment isn't there in a sense. It very clearly says that a government should not create a religion, make a particular religion--or in our day religion at all--an institution, or stop anyone from practicing a religion--or, again, not practicing one. The question then becomes does the National Day of Prayer and its government backing do any of those things? Does it create a religion? Does it set up religion as an institution? Does it stop someone from practicing their chosen religion as they see fit, or not practicing religion as all?

As far as I know, there is no compulsion to actually pray on the National Day of Prayer. There is also no compulsion to pray a specific prayer, to pray to a specific person or diety. The National Day of Prayer doesn't have an particular rites that must be observed from year to year. I'm sure each president has consistently observed it in his own way during their tenure, but that probably hasn't been the same from president to president. And although people who are against this see it as yet another crazy/stupid Christian thing, and the continuance of it a concession to the "Christian Right" they are technically the only ones assigning the National Day of Prayer to a particular religion. It's not the National Day of Prayer to the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, or the National Day of Prayers to the Ancestors, etc and so on. There also aren't any police beating you with clubs or tasing you if you aren't performing any religious observances at all.

Also, a lot of what I've seen from people online who are against the National Day of Prayer has been along the lines of "It doesn't do anything." "It's a pointless waste of time." "Why don't they do something more useful like give blood/help the poor/get a life." I think for most people thinking along those lines nothing I could say about how I've seen prayer change the person praying might be moot. But I can't imagine that some of the great leaders of our age fervently believed in prayer. Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the Dali Llama, etc. to name a few. Prayer did not make them less. It didn't prove their stupidity, it wasn't a sign of laziness, or a show of weakness. For many, I'm sure, it helped lend them strength. And whether you want to argue that they didn't actually need to pray, clearly it didn't hurt them. Even if it prayer does nothing in the end, it doesn't hurt the one who doesn't want to pray either.

Current Mood: rushed

Christian College Students Attacked in Iraq

ERBIL, Iraq — About 70 college students, most of them Christians, were wounded Sunday and another Iraqi was killed when a convoy of school buses was attacked in a double bombing on the outskirts of the northern city of Mosul, according to a security official.

“We were going for our education and they presented us with bombs,” said Jamil Salahuddin Jamil, 25, a sophomore geography major, who was on board the lead bus. “I still do not know what they want from Christians.”

The attack was a reminder of the threats in a still-disputed part of the country, claimed by Kurds and Arabs, where a resilient insurgency remains active and where American soldiers still staff checkpoints.

( Read the rest at the NY Times. )

Suspect Sought in Foiled Times Square Bomb Plot

A failed car bomb smoked, popped and shut down Times Square, causing panic, evacuations and confusion Saturday on one of the tourist spot's busiest nights. Most of the streets in the area were reopened Sunday morning, though a heavy police presence remained in the area.

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said officers are heading to a town in Pennsylvania to talk to a man who believes he may have recorded a bombing suspect on his video camera. Police are looking a for a white male in his 40s who was seen shedding a dark shirt with a red shirt underneath, he said at an afternoon press conference. Investigators are now looking through "hundreds of hours of surveillance videos," Mr. Kelly added.

( Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal. )

There's also an interesting article at the BBC--interesting because of their not-in-America perspective on it.

Seven dead as record flooding engulfs Tennessee

(CNN) -- Some of the worst flooding the mid-South has seen in decades has killed seven people in Tennessee, the state's emergency management agency said Sunday, with up to 20 inches of rain falling in parts of the state since Saturday and more expected Sunday evening.

The rains have washed out major roads, caused evacuations, and prompted dam failures. In Nashville, Tennessee, alone, more than 600 people were rescued from the water this weekend, Mayor Karl Dean said at a press conference Sunday afternoon.

"All of our major creeks and the Cumberland River are near flood level, if not at flood level," Dean said, referring to the waterway that bisects Nashville. "The ground is entirely saturated, and the rain continues to fall. There's nowhere for the water to go."

The western two thirds of Tennessee has seen between 6 and 20 inches of rain since Saturday, with flooding spreading to Kentucky on Sunday.

( Read the rest at the CNN.com )

Current Mood: hot

So Katya, knowing my propensity for re-blogging articles on the things that interest me, asked if I had seen articles about the violence against Christians in Nigeria. I had, I explained, but hadn't posted for a variety of reasons, not least of which was being tired of posting so much bad news lately. And now that I've re-pondered it I think I wanted to mention something about the complexity of the situation in the area. The attacks are thought to be in retaliation for severe violence against Muslims in the very same area of Nigeria in January. But part of the issue is that the Christians and Muslims also tend to be from different ethnic groups w/in Nigeria. There is the issue of "indigenes," people who have lived in the area for ages, and the "settlers," who at this point have also been in the area for several generations. Indigenes tend to be Christian; settlers tend to be Muslim.

Anywho, in talking about how I was kinda tired of posting bad news, Katya and I got into this whole slew of bad news things we'd run across in the last day or so. For me there was Nigeria, food not going to the needy in Somalia, World Vision aid workers killed in Pakistan and seemingly every headline my iGoogle page could throw at me from the 4 or 5 regular news feeds I subscribe to. Right now only CNet and E! are my friends. Well, except, y'know, Cory Haim died. Sigh. Katya mentioned (and luckily there are no links to depress you with) the cold lonely death of Juanita Goggins, the first Black woman elected to the S. Carolina legislature; the steady state of childbirth deaths in the US; and an elephant giving birth to a stillborn calf.

So while this is going on, what am I doing? Re-reviewing articles on what's going on in Nigeria on the NY Times online. Which led me to check out their frontpage for Africa. Which led me to a piece about a woman who has, for the last 7 years, photographed "young victims of sexual abuse in South Africa." The story is down and disturbing enough. This being an interactive piece, however, there is also a selection of pictures. Good Lord in Heaven.... The link is here, because, well, because these kids shouldn't be forgotten and made silent, but I warn you in advance about reading the article and viewing the pictures. Especially the pictures. The pics embedded in the article are pretty tame. Even the ones in the presentation are fairly tame, but the stories are not. I just...I can't not re-blog this one, go figure. Most of the pictures actually are safe for work, but you may not want to explain why you are either bawling or why you've just punched a hole in your monitor. A Quiet Bridge to Young Victims by Kerri MacDonald about Mariella Furrer.

And so you all don't stop visiting me anymore, or re-label my journal Debbie Downer Street, here's a bit of interesting happiness: a King Penguin that knows how to dress down. This one is definitely courtesy of Katya, Lord love her

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraq has increased security around all Christian places of worship after a wave of church bombings that has killed four and wounded at least 35 others.

The latest attack happened Monday morning in the northern city of Mosul, when a car bomb detonated near a church in the al-Faisaliya district, wounding three children, an Interior Ministry official told CNN.

Six churches in and around Baghdad were bombed over the weekend, leaving four dead, officials told CNN. A total of 35 people have been wounded in the wave of attacks, including the three children Monday.

(Read the rest on cnn.com)