Christians issue code of conduct for spreading faith without fanning tensions
A coalition representing most Christian churches around the world launched a rule book on Tuesday for spreading their faith that aims to reduce tensions among themselves and with followers of other faiths. The pioneering code of conduct, under negotiation for five years, was unveiled by the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Vatican and the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), which together claim to represent over 90 percent of Christianity.
It reaffirms their right to seek converts but also urges them to abandon “inappropriate methods of exercising mission by resorting to deception and coercive means”, saying that such behaviour “betrays the Gospel and may cause suffering to others”. Click here for the PDF text of the guidelines.
Christian missionaries have long been accused of offering money, food, or other goods to win converts in poor countries, either from other faiths or from rival churches. Tensions have also risen in recent decades as evangelical Protestants have stepped up efforts to convert Muslims, which is a capital offence in some Islamic countries. This also prompts retaliation against local Christians who do not seek converts.
“In spite of our divisions, we Christians have the duty to proclaim our faith without any compromise,” said Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Vatican’s department for interfaith dialogue. “Christian witness is facing new challenges which are putting accepted practices in question and are weakening our well-established ways of doing things. In a word, the situation is requiring Christian communities to consider, in a new way, how best to proclaim the Christian faith.”
“As our shared history has taught us, a lack of prudence and respect for others, leading to inappropriate means of proclamation of Good News, unavaoidably brings religious tensions, even violence, and the loss of human life,” he added.
WEA Secretary General Geoff Tunnicliffe said the code, entitled “Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World,” would be “a great resource” for Christians lobbying against anti-conversion laws passed in countries such as India. “Missionary zeal, as a sign of obedience to the gospel of Jesus, has always been a cornerstone of belief for evangelicals and so it is a special privilege to have the opportunity to work with these colleagues on such a document,” he said. “It is our hope that with this text we will learn together to practice our obedience better – to witness more and to be more faithful to Christ in our witnessing.”
In recent years, there have been increasing attacks on local Christian churches seen as the focus for conversion activity — in Pakistan, Egypt, India, Indonesia and other countries — in which many Christian believers have died.
U.S evangelical predicting May 21 doomsday to watch it on TV
The U.S. evangelical Christian broadcaster predicting that Judgment Day will come on Saturday says he expects to stay close to a TV or radio to monitor the unfolding apocalypse. Harold Camping, 89, previously made a failed prediction that Jesus Christ would return to Earth in 1994.
The head of the Christian radio network Family Stations Inc says that he is sure an earthquake will shake the Earth on May 21, sweeping true believers to heaven and leaving others behind to be engulfed in the world’s destruction over a few months.
“We know without any shadow of a doubt it is going to happen,” Camping told Reuters. His Family Radio has 66 U.S. stations and broadcasts in more than 30 languages through international affiliates. His supporters have posted about 2,200 billboards around the United States about the coming apocalypse, and dozens of followers have driven across the country to spread the news.
Camping, a civil engineer who once ran his own construction business, plans to spend May 21 with his wife in Alameda, in northern California, and watch the doomsday unfold. “I’ll probably try to be very near a TV or a radio or something,” he said. “I’ll be interested in what’s happening on the other side of the world as this begins.”
Like his last prediction, Camping’s doomsday date is based on his reading of the Bible and a timeline dating back to ancient events including the Biblical flood survived by Noah.
Read the full story by Gabrielle Saveri here.
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Does FRC index underline weak link between faith and family?
The conservative Christian, Washington-based Family Research Council (FRC) has just released its first “Annual Index of Family Belonging and Rejection.” You can click here to see its full details.
The “Index of Belonging” is 45 percent and that of “Rejection” is 55 percent. The report’s author, Patrick Fagan, who heads FRC’s Marriage and Religion Research Institute, says the following:
“Only 45 percent of U.S. teenagers have spent their childhood with an intact family, with both their birth mother and their biological father legally married to one another since before or around the time of the teenager’s birth … 55 percent of teenagers live in families where their biological parents have rejected each other. The families with a history of rejection include single-parent families, stepfamilies, and children who no longer live with either birth parent but with adoptive or foster parents.”
An intact family is one defined as one in which “a child’s birth mother and biological father (were) legally married to one another since before or around the time of the child’s birth.”
One thing that really strikes me about the index, which draws on data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, is that while it gives charts and breakdowns in a detailed appendix based on ethnicity, state, region, by region and ethnic group, by the country’s 26 largest cities, and other geographical criteria, there is no chart that gives a breakdown on faith lines.
This is interesting, not least because of FRC’s overtly conservative, evangelical outlook on the world. Indeed, the report says that the task of repairing the country’s families — which it says lies in the “restoration of the husband-wife relationship” — must be “led primarily by the institution of religion (church, synagogue, mosque and temple) and aided by the institution of education (schools, universities and media). These three—family, church and school—are the prime shapers of relationships.”
The FRC report does not show a weak link between faith and family, it shows a weak link between evangelicalism and faith. Asians, probably in part because of the South Asian Muslims (as the author notes) have high “belonging” percentages as do Mormons. That fact of the matter is that the findings are a critical commentary on the lack of conservatism in the evangelical world. They are very worldly people who are quite immersed in the secular culture and accept many of its values with a Christian veneer. I could say the same for many of my fellow religionists in America (Eastern Orthodox). The more socially conservative (not “evangelical” or “Catholic”) a group is, the greater the index of belonging. The trouble is that most Christian denominations do not use cultural pressure, including excommunication, in order to enforce standards. The utter hypocrisy will continue until they decide to do so.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and abortion at U.S. military bases…
One little-reported aspect of the political wrangling around attempts to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that bans gays from serving openly in the U.S. military was how the religious right tied it to another hot-button cultural issue: abortion.
This would certainly have caught the attention of socially conservative Republicans who were instrumental in defeating a measure aimed at its repeal in the U.S. Senate on Thursday night.
Many if not most conservative U.S. evangelicals were already strongly opposed to allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military — a point underscored by a Pentagon study unveiled at the end of November that found that military chaplains were strongly opposed to ending “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
That study noted that a large number of the military’s 3,000 chaplains — many of whom are evangelical – believe that “homosexuality is a sin and an abomination.” Evangelicals are also the staunchest supporters of the U.S. war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and much of the military’s fighting ranks are almost certainly drawn from families that are conservative, patriotic and often religious.
In interviews I’ve had with people such as Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC) — an influential conservative lobby that is strongly evangelical — a related theme has been evangelical concerns about how repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” could impact the morale of stressed soldiers in the war zones.
This has been a constant theme on conservative Christian radio talk shows and blogs that reach a key base for the Republican Party.
“It’s not entirely clear, at least to me, that the legislation would have channeled tax-payer dollars to fund abortions at military bases or not.”
You are supposed to be a journalist. Read the text of the bill. Clearly this bill would NOT channel tax-payer dollars to fund abortions. The claim to the contrary is a cynical ploy taking advantage of the fact that no average person will read the bill.
You are a journalist. “Oh well, maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t” is not journalism, it’s a sad cop-out. Tell the truth and report the facts.
Brazil “values voters” go YouTube against prez hopeful Rousseff
The YouTube video that helped push Brazil’s presidential election to a second round begins with Paschoal Piragine solemnly telling his flock: “In 30 years as a pastor, I’ve never done this before.” He then warns them that the ruling Workers’ Party wants not only to legalize abortion, but would make divorce easier, permit the spread of pornography, and continue to allow tribes in the Amazon to bury alive “thousands of children.”
The video, which includes disturbing images and has received nearly 3 million views, concludes with the Baptist preacher telling his followers not to vote for the Workers’ Party in upcoming elections. “Otherwise, God will judge our land,” Piragine says.
The last-minute doubts of many evangelical Christian and Catholic voters probably cost Workers’ Party presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff an outright first-round victory in last Sunday’s election, polls suggest. The shift is unlikely to keep Rousseff from winning an October 31 runoff vote against her nearest contender, opposition leader Jose Serra.
Yet the twice-divorced former Marxist guerrilla, who in past interviews has questioned the existence of God and supported greater abortion rights, will face enduring scrutiny from an increasingly powerful bloc of “values voters” that could prove a major source of opposition if she takes office.
The election could signal a sea change in Brazil’s politics in which social issues begin to trump economic ones for some voters as the country enjoys an unprecedented run of growth. Rousseff could also face constant resistance to her agenda from a faith-based movement or party in the same way that Democratic Party presidents have in the United States since the 1990s.
“I just don’t trust her, and I’m not sure I ever will,” Piragine told Reuters by telephone. “There are a lot of us who will continue to oppose her agenda if she’s president.”
Rousseff courts Brazil’s faith voters with “for life” comments
Brazil’s ruling party candidate Dilma Rousseff is playing up her Roman Catholic background in efforts to win back religious voters, whose doubts about her faith and position on abortion rights may have cost her an outright victory in Sunday’s presidential election.
In a surprise shift, many religious voters who oppose abortion, especially evangelical Christians, abandoned Rousseff’s center-left Workers’ Party to vote for the Green Party’s Marina Silva, who captured an unexpectedly large 19 percent of the vote.
“Personally, I’m from a Catholic family. I am and always was in favor of life,” Rousseff told reporters on Tuesday outside of her campaign headquarters in Brasilia. “I have no problem addressing the religious issue. My project addresses all the religions.”
She did not elaborate. Internet videos in recent weeks showed Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla leader, apparently favoring the decriminalization of abortion, which is illegal in most cases.
Evangelical Christians are growing in influence in Brazil and now make up about 20 percent of the population in the overwhelmingly Catholic country.
Ms President Dilma Rousseff is right about abortion in Brazil. It’s completely hypocritical to hide the truth of the fact that millions of very poor, illiterate, unemployed Brazilian women are undergoing abortion in Brazil every year, in the most chaotic conditions. Of course, being right and aware of reality in our country, Ms. Rousseff is in favour of legalization and provision of concrete health care conditions offered freely by the government to these Brazilian women who cannot afford to raise a child or the abortion procedure itself. Our country is full of beggars who were brought to the world by these needy, resourceless women, who are better off undegoing abortion, and their to be children are also better off not coming to the world to suffer and hunger.
Ms. Rousseff is an intelligent, educated, experienced, realistic woman and knows best what less privileged women in our country needs. These ridiculous so-called religious people do not support the millions of newly-born babies who starve from an early age and have no other choice in life other than become a criminal in their teens. These not aborted children are killing and robbing us from the middle-class all over Brazil. This a horror, sad chain that must be broken with the interruption of pregnancy and / or contraceptive procedure in the first place.
from Tales from the Trail:
Obama sits down with Rev. Billy Graham
President Barack Obama had his first face-to-face talks on Sunday with one of America's top spiritual leaders, the Reverend Billy Graham.
Graham, 91, who is ailing with Parkinson's disease, has prayed with U.S. presidents over the course of the past 50 years or so.
Obama visited his Montreat log cabin home at the end of a weekend trip to western North Carolina.
"Rev. Graham has obviously been an important spiritual leader for past presidents and for the American people for decades," White House spokesman Bill Burton said.
He called Graham "a real treasure for our country and the president appreciates the opportunity to visit him at his home and speak with him."
He said he assumed Obama and Graham would pray together.
The U.S. Army last week withdrew an invitation to Graham's son Franklin Graham to speak at a Pentagon prayer service next month following an outcry over his references to Islam as a violent religion. The invitation had been extended by the private, Colorado-based National Day of Prayer Task Force.
Chanting Haitian voodoo celebrants honor quake dead
Dressed in white, shaking decorated gourd rattles and singing praises to “Olorum Papa” (God the Father), several hundred practitioners of Haiti’s voodoo religion held a public ceremony on Sunday to honor those killed in the January 12 earthquake.
While several Christian ceremonies have been held to mourn the hundreds of thousands of quake dead, this was the first national commemoration by Haiti’s voodoo religion, which has had to defend itself against accusations by some Evangelical preachers that it somehow caused the deadly natural disaster.
More than half of Haiti’s nearly 10 million people are believed to practice voodoo, a religion brought from West Africa several centuries ago by slaves forced to work on the plantations of their white masters in what was then the rich French Caribbean colony of Saint Domingue. The religion is recognized by Haiti’s state and protected by the constitution.
To the sound of rattles and drums, the celebrants held a Booroum, a voodoo ritual which they believe sends the souls of the dead “under water” so they can be cleansed and return to life as better beings. “Hounkou Bolokou Djavohoun Bohoun”, chorused the worshipers, repeating an ancient voodoo incantation intended to encourage the souls of the dead.
I had been originally been looking for some thing I saw this morning on the computer about what I thought was Haiti and came along this little bit of information. Very interesting. It has been a year since the quake and I can’t imagine anybody anywhere holding in their emotions during the past year.Considering, but knowing voo-doo they probably did.I myself know no voo doo but I wear across around my neck and when I think about it, it moves. Anything is possible in these weird and unsure days here in America. I can only imagine what it is like in Haiti. I intend to find out by studying the peoples of Haiti one year later after the quake. Not study them so much,more like find out where they are and what they do everyday. Where ever they may be. I want to know what they need the most. Maybe…just maybe… I can help.
Singapore raps evangelical pastor for ridiculing Buddhists, Taoists
Singapore has warned an evangelical Christian pastor that his online videos are offensive to Buddhists and Taoists, underlining the city-state’s concerns that religion is a potential faultline for its multicultural society.
Pastor Rony Tan, of the Lighthouse Evangelism megachurch, apologized and pulled the video clips off the internet after being visited by the government’s Internal Security Department (ISD) on Monday, the pastor and the government said on their websites. “I sincerely apologize for my insensitivity towards the Buddhists and Taoists, and solemnly promise that it will never happen again,” Tan said.
The Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement on Tuesday that “Pastor Tan’s comments were highly inappropriate and unacceptable as they trivialised and insulted the beliefs of Buddhists and Taoists. They can also give rise to tension and conflict between the Buddhist/Taoist and Christian communities. ISD told Pastor Tan that in preaching or proselytising his faith, he must not run down other religions, and must be mindful of the sensitivities of other religions.”
Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng repeated that in another statement the next day, adding that Tan had met with Buddhist and Taoist leaders and apologised personally for his coments. “While each of us is free to propagate our religious beliefs, it must never be by way of insulting or denigrating the religious beliefs of others,” Wong said.
The clips are no longer available online, but the Straits Times newspaper said they involved ridiculing beliefs, including Buddhist concepts of rebirth, karma and nirvana, drawing laughter from Tan’s audience. This Buddhist websites has posted what it says are the original videos.
Most U.S. Protestant pastors see Islam as dangerous – survey
Here’s an interesting survey that was released on Monday by LifeWay Research, which is the number crunching arm of the South Baptist Convention, America’s largest evangelical group.
It says that two-thirds of Protestant pastors in America regard Islam as a dangerous religion. You can see their press release here. The full survey has not been posted on their site.
But in a nut shell, the survey of over 1,000 pastors of different Protestant denominations found that 45 percent strongly agreed with the statement “I believe Islam is a dangerous religion,” while 21 percent agreed to it “somewhat.”
The survey was conducted in October, before the massacre at the Fort Hood army base in Texas allegedly by a Muslim soldier.
Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, said: “… our survey asked whether pastors viewed Islam as ‘dangerous,’ but that does not necessarily mean ‘violent.’ ‘Dangerous’ can be defined in a variety of ways, including from the perspective of spiritual influence. Regardless of the definition, the numbers tell us that Protestant pastors are concerned.”
Given the very conservative cast of the SBC and strong evangelical Protestant support over the years for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some people will automatically take the survey with a grain of salt. But the survey did include clergy from mainline Protestant denominations as well as evangelicals.
Not surprisingly, it found that: “Mainline denomination pastors are less likely than evangelicals to say Islam is “a dangerous religion.” While 77 percent of evangelical pastors either somewhat or strongly agree Islam is dangerous, only 44 percent of mainline pastors feel the same way, and 38 percent strongly disagree.”
I dont know what topic is discussing here. i am a Muslim by birth. i m 31 years of age . worked in very famous banks in Pakistan as wel as dubai. i want to convert as Christan, if i announced here in Pakistan or UAE every one would feel honor to kill me. can any one guide me how i can get the amnesty and conversion
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