Top Kremlin aide says Putin is God’s gift to Russia
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was sent to Russia by God to help his country during one of its most turbulent times, the Kremlin’s chief political strategist said on Friday in rare public remarks. “I honestly believe that Putin is a person who was sent to Russia by fate and by the Lord at a difficult time for Russia,” Vladislav Surkov, a staunch Putin supporter and one of Russia’s most powerful men, was quoted by Interfax news agency as telling state-run Chechen TV.
“(Putin was) preordained by fate to preserve our peoples,” said Surkov, who is also the Kremlin’s first deputy chief of staff.
Putin, 58, was president between 2000-2008 before becoming prime minister and is widely viewed as Russia’s key decision-maker. The former KGB spy, picked by an ailing President Boris Yeltsin as his prime minister and heir apparent, restored national pride by sending troops back into Chechnya to quell a burgeoning insurgency and presided over a long economic boom following the chaos of the Soviet Union’s collapse.
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Israel’s army chief under fire about God reference in memorial rites
The Israeli military is embroiled in a public battle over whether God ought to be mentioned at memorial rites for fallen soldiers. The ferocity of the debate, going to the heart of Israel’s secular and religious Jewish divide, prompted the intervention on Monday of a parliamentary panel that urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fractious cabinet to decide the issue.
The controversy is over whether Yizkor, the Hebrew prayer of remembrance, should begin at military ceremonies with the words “May God remember” or “May the people of Israel remember”. Military policy calls for the version mentioning God to be used, but enforcement has been patchy in an apparent nod to the sentiments of the Jewish state’s secular majority.
Media reports that Israel’s new armed forces chief, Lieutenant-General Benny Ganz, had sided with chaplains who insisted on using the “May God remember” phrase have drawn complaints the military is becoming too Orthodox.
“The people’s army is little by little becoming an army of God,” left-wing legislator Ilan Gilon said.
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Harrisburg, Pennsylvania turns to God for fiscal relief
Pennsylvania’s debt-ridden capital of Harrisburg has tried every form of fiscal belt-tightening, from layoffs to furloughs to filing for bankruptcy. Now, it is turning to God.
Mayor Linda Thompson said on Friday she will join religious leaders in three days of fasting and prayer to encourage “a cooperative spirit among government leaders, the business community and citizens.”
“I am open about my faith and will be participating in the voluntary prayer and fast,” Thompson said in a statement. The city is now weighing a financial rescue plan presented by the state.
The fast and prayers, which will be facilitated by about a dozen Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religious leaders, will begin at midnight on June 21 and end on June 24.
On Monday, a team of state-appointed advisors recommended the city sell a deeply indebted incinerator at the root of its fiscal problems, renegotiate its labor agreements, cut jobs, sell other assets and assume $26 million in new borrowing.
The city council has until July 23 to adopt the plan.
Pious Indians bank on holy deposits
In a bank with no security gates, guards or locks, deposits from thousands of customers from across India are stacked on shelves, protected from theft by the grace of God. In a cramped room in a small house in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Ram Ram Bank offers no interest or loans, but has around 5,000 customers who flock to deposit documents bearing God’s name.
“There is no need for security as there is no fear of any theft,” said Lovelesh Tewari, who founded the bank 25 years ago. “People feel better by writing God’s name as it becomes a medium to release their pent up frustrations and eventually the faith makes them work toward their goals.”
The bank’s customers scribble “Ram,” the protagonist in the Indian mythological epic Ramayana, on pieces of paper as many as 100,000 times and deposit them in the bank. Ram is also known as Rama. Ram Ram used to accept scribbles on cigarette packs or on pieces of old newspaper. But now Tewari provides proper notebooks for the purpose, courtesy of one of his customers.
Religion is no barrier. Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims write the name of Ram in their native languages. Every six months the stacks of “deposits” are sent to be displayed in a temple in Ayodhya, the birth place of Ram.
Catholic-atheist meetings end with Pope Benedict appeal to youth
Pope Benedict urged French youths on Friday to help put God back into public debate, either as Christians sharing their faith or as non-believers seeking more justice and solidarity in a cold utilitarian world. In a video address from the Vatican to an evening rally outside Notre Dame Cathedral in central Paris, the pope also urged them to “tear down the barriers of fear of the other, the foreigner, of those who are not like you” that mutual ignorance can create.
Benedict’s address, projected on a large screen in the square, came at the end of two days of a Vatican-sponsored dialogue between Roman Catholics and atheists, part of a drive to revive the faith in Europe that is a hallmark of his papacy.
“The question of God doesn’t endanger society, it doesn’t threaten human life!” he told the crowd during a break in its evening of modern and ancient Christian music. “The question of God must not be absent from the great questions of our time.”
He said religions had nothing to fear from secular society as long as it had “an open secularism that lets all live as they believe, in accordance with their conscience.”
The success of secularists, especially in France, in pushing faith to the fringes of the public sphere prompted Benedict to launch the discussions with atheists due to continue in at least 16 European and North American cities over the next two years.
The series started in impressive surroundings — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the Sorbonne university and the Institut de France, home of the prestigious Academie Francaise. Click for the programme details in French for the sessions at UNESCO, the Sorbonne and the Institut de France.
Most speakers were eminent French thinkers, making the sessions feel more like a post-graduate philosophy seminar than a public debate likely to influence a wider public. They were also directed at select small audiences. Access to the UNESCO and the Institut de France events was by invitation only and the open session in the Sorbonne’s Grand Amphitheatre attracted at most around 200 people.
Guestview: “Almost Christian” teens challenge U.S. parents and churches
The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Elizabeth E. Evans is a freelance writer, columnist and priest-in-charge at St. Marks Episcopal Church, Honey Brook, Pennsylvania.
By Elizabeth E. Evans
A large-scale study charting the religious habits of American teenagers has quietly been underway for almost a decade but has received relatively little media attention until now. As the data from the longitudinal analysis performed by the National Study of Youth & Religion is released, (NSYR) it could and should stimulate unsettling questions for Christian parents and churches alike.
Featuring phone interviews with 3,300 teens and their parents and three-hour interviews with close to 300 of them, the NSYR research random sampled feedback by kids from any tradition – or none.
Impassioned and articulate, NSYR research team member Kenda Creasy Dean has distilled her reflections on the findings into a volume that is both a critique of “status quo” Christian practice and encouragement to take faith more seriously.
In Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church, the Princeton Theological Seminary professor mines the NSYR information to examine a virus she believes is currently wreaking havoc with American denominations — “moral therapeutic deism.” Coined by NYSR chief investigator Christian Smith, a Notre Dame professor, the term symbolizes the view that “religion is about being nice, feeling good about themselves, and that otherwise God pretty much stays out of the way — unless you need to call upon God to serve your needs,” says Dean.
Excerpts from pope’s London speech to Catholic teachers
Visiting a Catholic school in London on Friday, Pope Benedict said teachers should give their pupils not only marketable skills but also wisdom, which he said was inseparable from knowledge of God. Catholic schools and Catholic religious teachers play an important part in transmitting this wisdom, he said. He also stressed the need to protect pupils from sexual predators.
Following are excerpts from his address to the teachers:
“I am pleased to have this opportunity to pay tribute to the outstanding contribution made by religious men and women in this land to the noble task of education… As you know, the task of a teacher is not simply to impart information or to provide training in skills intended to deliver some economic benefit to society; education is not and must never be considered as purely utilitarian. It is about forming the human person, equipping him or her to live life to the full – in short it is about imparting wisdom. And true wisdom is inseparable from knowledge of the Creator, for “both we and our words are in his hand, as are all understanding and skill in crafts”.
“This transcendent dimension of study and teaching was clearly grasped by the monks who contributed so much to the evangelization of these islands … Since the search for God, which lies at the heart of the monastic vocation, requires active engagement with the means by which he makes himself known – his creation and his revealed word – it was only natural that the monastery should have a library and a school. It was the monks’ dedication to learning as the path on which to encounter the Incarnate Word of God that was to lay the foundations of our Western culture and civilization…
“Many of you belong to teaching orders that have carried the light of the Gospel to far-off lands as part of the Church’s great missionary work, and for this too I give thanks and praise to God. Often you laid the foundations of educational provision long before the State assumed a responsibility for this vital service to the individual and to society. As the relative roles of Church and State in the field of education continue to evolve, never forget that religious have a unique contribution to offer to this apostolate, above all through lives consecrated to God and through faithful, loving witness to Christ, the supreme Teacher.”
God did not create the universe, gravity did, says Stephen Hawking
God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.
In “The Grand Design,” co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” Hawking writes. “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”
Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book “A Brief History of Time,” an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity. His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.
For an initial sceptical reaction, see Mark Vernon’s Philosophy and Life blog.
Okay, I am not a scientists, and I am a dumb when it comes to mathematics, but very soon, we’ll see true facts behind every false theories from our scientists ( Science is not the problem, the problem is “some” of our feeble scientists who wanted to be renowned by force, thus creating problems to make science a problem). They are using calculation to define issues of observation; they are proving to you things they themselves haven’t seen with their own eyes; they designed cameras and computers to make their theories work in line; they thoughts ” we can remove the hand of the Creator by denying Him in our theories, so people could believe they existed for nothing”. They said things drop to the centre of the earth because a force attract them, and whatever does go up must come down. Well, I have seen things which goes up but never come down- How about that? Why isn’t gravity attracting it? Can we breathe in the air in the space? Is there atmosphere there atall? Not really! The theory of gravity is hoax; there is no gravity! Though it may be in the space, but never ever on this very planet I live.
Was this not the same Hawking who said God created the Sun? Few months later, he denied God didn’t! Now he is telling you gravity formed you from nothing, to make you feel nothing from nothing, so you can live for nothing and die for nothing! Guys, wake up! If you need to understand any mysteries behind human existence, please read the Bible, and simply ask for wisdom, knowledge and understanding. I did just this and I have been inspired things that can be done to effectively stop the “giant pilar that riad our lands”. All I know, and that I’ll adhere to is that there is a Creator whose hands are full of wonders and mind with creative thoughts; He created the stars and the sun, he created the moon, too. HE CREATED YOU- All these I knew before reading the Bible atall. And if you don’t want to bring in religion in this sense, simply put away religion theories and explanation of Life, and embark on serious NATURE EXPLORATION, and you’ll see a creative mind in the centre of everything in LIFE.
There is a loving, intelligent, sweet, faithful and mighty creator who created every discovered and undiscovered species we have seen and yet to see and that we’ll never see; His name is Jehovaah, the almighty, the all-powerful, the all-controller!
Thank you,
Emmanuel.
Q+A – What’s next in Malaysia’s “Allah” row?
Malaysia’s government has filed for a stay of execution pending its appeal of a court ruling allowing a Malay-language Catholic paper to describe the Christian God as “Allah”, amid growing Islamic anger in the country. We reported on the dispute here yesterday, including how it has spilled over into Facebook.
What lies ahead in this row threatening to increase religious tensions in the mainly Muslim but multi-racial Southeast Asian country?
Our Q+A asks why this is arousing so much anger, what happens next, whether there will be political fallout from the dispute and whether religious tensions present an important threat to religious, political and economic interests in Malaysia.
Malaysia’s “Allah” row spills over into Facebook
More than 43,000 Malaysians have protested online over a court ruling allowing a Malay-language Catholic paper to use the word “Allah” for “God,” signaling growing Islamic anger in this mostly Muslim Southeast Asian country.
A group page on social networking site Facebook was drawing 1,500 new supporters an hour on Monday as last week’s court ruling split political parties and even families. Among those who signed up for the protest were Deputy Trade Minister Mukhriz Mahathir, the son of Malaysia’s longest serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamed, while Mahathir’s daughter Marina called critics of the court decision “idiots” in her blog.
The government said on Monday it had filed an appeal against the court ruling amid concerns the issue could cause religious and racial conflict in this country of 28 million which has large Christian, Buddhist and Hindu minorities.
The Facebook page, named in Malay as “Protesting the use of the name Allah by non-Muslims”, said that the group was for Muslims “who realise that this is propaganda to confuse Muslims now and in future.”
The Catholic Church, which publishes a Malay version of its newspaper, The Herald, says that it uses the word “Allah” — the normal word for God in the Malay language — to meet the needs of Malay-speaking Catholics on the island of Borneo. “There should not be a cause for concern because some people have got the idea that we are out to convert (Muslims), but not at all, there is no question of this,” Father Lawrence Andrew, the newspaper’s editor, told Reuters.
The reason Muslims are so concerned about the use of word Allah for God is that Muslims don’t want anyone to be called as son of Allah (na’ozobillah) or daughter of Allah (na’ozobillah) or even anyone sharing any of His powers whatsoever.
I hope my point is clear, if anyone wants to use this greatest word Allah, then they MUST adhere to the respect this name deserves. He is One, most powerful and the most merciful.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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