Rowan Williams has an argument which at least on front page contributor would agree with:
Dr Rowan Williams said it was right to be suspicious of proselytism that involves “bullying, insensitive approaches” to other faiths.
Latest Updates: christianity RSS
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thabet
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thabet
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thabet
Malaysia defends inaction over Catholic ‘desecration’:
The archbishop of Kuala Lumpur Murphy Pakiam has criticised the government’s “failure to act” over the incident, in which the pair joined a Catholic service to investigate claims Muslims were illegally converting.
“The journalists have displayed utmost disrespect for the Catholic community when they admit receiving and spitting out the Holy Communion,” he told a press conference Thursday.
However, the government’s top lawyer, Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail, said the pair did not understand the significance of the wafer, which Catholics believe represents the body of Jesus Christ.
“The actions of the two reporters may have hurt the feelings of the people but I was satisfied that they did not intend to offend anyone. It was an act of sheer ignorance,” he said in a statement late Thursday.
According to the BBC report the two journalists spat out the communion wafer.
Not that some Muslims, and certainly not those in Malaysia, have a reputation for getting upset at something they deem offensive.
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aziz
The lunatic fringe: christians praying for Obama’s death.
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arif
Review of Mark Siljander’s “A Deadly Misunderstanding”
I want to be clear: this is no milquetoast universalist pablum. Siljander is NOT claiming some notion of all roads leading to God. What he’s doing is far more careful and well-thought than that. He is demonstrating the frequency with which fundamental–often violent–differences between the Abrahamic faiths are based on ignorance: not only ignorance of the “other’s” faith, but all too often ignorance of the actual text and context of our own faith and its creeds.
I read good number of books and Mark still holds a high place for me in terms of promoting interfaith dialog. Via @siljander
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aziz
I offer my take on the Malaysian fracas over the name of Allah at City of Brass.
Should the UMNO succeed in their bid to overturn the court ruling permitting Christians to use the name Allah, then I humbly suggest to the Christian community that there are 98 other names they can (and should) iterate through. They can start with “al Aziz”
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thabet
A dramatic loss of faith in public:
“I think I was probably quite narrow-minded and fundamental in my views and a bit of a scary person,” the former Olympic champion told Sky News.
“I believed that what I believed was the truth. Some of those extremes I feel slightly embarrassed about now, but overall no regrets.
“It was where I was at the time – it’s not where I am now.”
Edwards added he now thinks it is “nonsense” that praying to God could help a sportsman before a competition.
“My prayers were always that God would give me the strength to do the best that I could do. Somehow athletes feel it’s a lucky charm,” he said.
“They believe that if they believe in God, He will give them the strength to win.
“When you look at the world and there are people starving and dying and suffering, is God going to be so concerned about the outcome of an athletics contest?
“My guess is not. Why would He intervene in something that is just a game?”
This is a man who refused to participate in sporting events held on Sundays, and who comes from a religious family (his father is a vicar).
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mirelle
I was digging through an upstairs closet (aka Graveyard of Dead Computers) this afternoon and I came upon a framed giclee picture that I paid a couple hundred dollars for probably a decade ago. I was so proud of myself, I beat everyone out on eBay to pick this thing up, but now I just don’t know what to do with it. Well, except that I’m absolutely sure I’ll Never Ever Publicly Display This Thing Ever Again. I’m actually rather mortified and repelled by the religious symbolism it portrays. There’s another aspect of this picture that didn’t even occur to me when I bought it, but which became clear to me back when I read an article about Ted Haggard’s fall from grace and how much his church looooved these pictures by this artist.
This is the sales verbiage from the website:
The perfect gift that will remind all who see it of the incredible gift of forgiveness that God gave us through His Son, Jesus Christ. The perfect gift for your church, social organizations, hospital rooms, foyers and entry ways, or that large area in your home in need of essential inspirational Wall Decor!
Here’s a link to the image itself. Oh yeah, and they’re selling a LIFE SIZED version now. I’m afraid to think that there might have been a time when I might have bought it.
Should I try to sell it on eBay or Craigslist? Or just walk it straight out to the trash can, do not pass Go, do not collect $200?
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aziz
The end of the Anglican Church? If I knew more about history, I would understand why this is significant. Unfortunately the Baroque Cycle by Stephenson only goes back to the 17th century.
(via Esmay, or Mays as I like to call him in Halal Latin)
UPDATE, via Sully is this extensive analysis by another Catholic blogger. Will there be a similar move by disaffected Episcopalians?
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johnpi
Obama’s new pastor views Islam as violent faith.
More than a year after he was forced to disown his Chicago pastor, President Obama has begun to attend services led by a Christian chaplain who views Islam as a violent faith.
The chaplain’s name is Cary Cash.
Mr Cash calls Islam violent, a faith that “from its very birth has used the edge of the sword as a means to convert or conquer those with different religious convictions”.
Cash, a chaplain in one of the first units to reach Baghdad, believes that a “wall of angels” protected his troops when they fought their way to the Iraqi capital in March 2003. During his deployment he baptized more than 50 servicemen. In his book, A Table in the Presence: The Dramatic Account of How a U.S. Marine Battalion Experienced God’s Presence Amidst the Chaos of the War in Iraq, Cash said of the mission: “Yes, our men were lost and separated. But our God was not confused. Just as He had from the very beginning of the war, He was providentially working all things together for the good of a cause that was just and true.”
He added: “Sadly, grace is often absent in Islam, which is based upon binding religious law, requiring strenuous adherence to every tenet of the ‘Five Pillars of Allah.’
“A religion that emerges from the soil of strict adherence to law as a means of gaining God’s favour will always tend toward extreme self sacrifice.”
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thabet
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thabet
Fiji’s very own Talibangelicals:
A “Jesus crusade” led by Fiji’s police force has been compared to the rule of the Taliban.
Editor in Chief of the Fiji Times, Mr Netani Rika, addressed journalism and communications students at the University of Queensland yesterday, telling them of life under the illegal rule of interim Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama.
Mr Rika said police converts to the fundamentalist New Methodist Church had replaced military personnel as in-house censors in newsrooms.
(Via Talk To Action.)
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buzz
Worship services at the first (and last) unsplintered monolithic religion
Every simpleton who watches Fox news knows clearly that while we ’speak’ of moderate and extreme Muslims…in fact, they are all one fatwa away from being radicalized. Rifqa Bary has made this quite clear.
So it goes with Christianity in the dreaded “Fitnutz” debate. While abrogation has been defined and refined, one thing most of you involved in the discussion will agree on is that Christians are all idiots who believe exactly the same thing: the Divinity, the Trinity and the only begotten Son of God.
Not necessarily so fellow bloggers. Meet the non Trinitarians. Here the divinity of Jesus and the trinity are debated according to scripture. Can it be that there is variation in Christian belief? I thought that was only a “Muslim thing.”
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johnpi
A high school football coach in Kentucky loaded 20 members of the team onto a school bus and drove them to his evangelical Baptist church, where about half of them were cajoled (free steak dinner!) and pressured into being baptized.
One mother is outraged because parents were not informed, though some of the parents who were members of the church knew of it and attended the ceremony. The school’s district superintendent attended too.
Rob Boston writes:
The bottom line here is that public schools have no business meddling in the private religious lives of students… I don’t blame [parent] Michelle Ammons for being angry. She rightly believes that she and her husband can oversee the religious life of their son. No school official should be interfering in that relationship. As an aside, imagine the uproar that would have erupted in Breckenridge County had the coach taken the players to a mosque where they were pressured to adopt Islam.
Evangelical Baptist Christianity – it’s all about the free steak dinner…
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thabet
I am not surprised to read that our own neocon cleric Michael Nazir-Ali is off to the US to give a speech to a group of neocons:
Michael Nazir-Ali is an example of Christians in Europe who use ‘Islam’ as a vehicle to express their frustration and anxiety at the loss of standing their respective traditions and institutions have suffered.
If the Anglican Right does want to take the Church into a more aggressively evangelical direction, then they should seek to break the link between church and state.
(Via Andrew Brown.)
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thabet
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church was unhappy with Madonna’s concert in Sofia over this past weekend, although the show was apparently a sell-out.
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thabet
“Latinos are changing the nature of American religion”:
The main reason, he thinks, is ethnic identity. Evangelical services are not only in Spanish, as many Catholic sermons are nowadays, but are performed by Latinos rather than Irish or Polish-American priests, with the cadences, rhythms, innuendos and flow familiar from the mother country. The evangelical services tend to be livelier than Catholic liturgy and to last longer, often turning into an outing lasting the whole day. Women play greater roles, and there are fewer parishioners for each pastor than in the Catholic church.
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aziz
at City of Brass, I have an exclusive transcript of Pastor Rick Warren’s remarks at the Islamic Society of North America’s 2009 conference a few weeks ago.
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aziz
One of the books on my reading list is the Bible. I am looking for some suggestions on versions that have some explanatory discussion, as I am interested in the “mainstream” – this is a project to acquire knowledge about Christian belief, not minutae of interpretation.
Some of the recommendations I have already received are Gottwald’s The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction, and McDowell’s The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict. Others?
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aziz
Interesting Christian blog, “His Peace Upon Us“. From the About page:
I am a Christian follower of Jesus who loves the people of the Middle East. The basic premise of this blog is that we cannot love those we do not know. So I am hopeful that this blog is one way Muslims and Christians get to know each other.
I thank God for my wonderful wife and three beautiful children. I enjoy people of other cultures, telling Arabic jokes, eating shawarma and falafel, and studying US presidential history.
bookmark it – the Brass Crescent Awards are coming up again!
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plimfix
Karen Armstrong asserts that ‘…the extraordinary and eccentric emphasis on “belief” in Christianity today is an accident of history that has distorted our understanding of religious truth…’ I think Karen misunderstands the nature of belief as expressed in a late modern context, which is not exclusive to Christianity (however Muslim thinkers may untranslate and conceptualise ‘belief’), in my view.
Such statements of religious belief are, at least in part, statements of identity.
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thabet
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thabet
I don’t suppose news that knowledge of the Bible has declined in Britain coupled with the Church of England’s financial woes had anything to do with this report?
It argued that the determination of ministers to tackle Islamic extremism in the wake of the London bombings on July 7, 2005, had led to a preoccupation with Muslim communities at the expense of Christian groups.
Subsequently, the report said, churches are facing a challenge to maintain their presence in poor parts of the country.
The report’s co-author, the Rt Rev Stephen Lowe, Bishop for Urban Life and Faith, said that the Church of England had applied to the Department of Communities and Local Government for money to “enable us to support parishes”.
“It seems as if political correctness by Government may defeat us,” he said, adding that the Church was ideally placed to help improve social cohesion.
The Church joins Ungod-botherer Richard Dawkins in claiming Muslims receive preferential treatment from the government.
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thabet
What Michael Nazir-Ali (a man who is clearly interested in bringing American style culture wars to our shores) should acknowledge that the state privileges his religious group enjoys should be brought to an end. This will then allow him to freely express his opinions and religious beliefs on multiculturalism, Muslims, and homosexuality.
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thabet
Calvinism ‘flourishes in China’:
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thabet
New research into the Christianity community under Arab rule in Malta is to be published later this year.
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thabet
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thabet
James Wellman interviewed 450 liberal and evangelical Christians, and found a “close correspondence between American Christianity and war making”.
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aziz
stupid manufactured issue of the day: the “Bible Bill” which will designate 2010 as the “Year of the Bible”.
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aziz
This is bad news no matter how you look at it – Christian populations are declining in the middle east.
