CHRISTIANS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

From an op-ed in the New York Times:  "Who will stand up for the Christians."

WHY is the world silent while Christians are being slaughtered in the Middle East and Africa? In Europe and in the United States, we have witnessed demonstrations over the tragic deaths of Palestinians who have been used as human shields byHamas, the terrorist organization that controls Gaza. The United Nations has held inquiries and focuses its anger on Israel for defending itself against that same terrorist organization. But the barbarous slaughter of thousands upon thousands of Christians is met with relative indifference.

ISIS IN IRAQ

VICE video of ISIS on spreading the Caliphate.

VICE video on Kurds as they face ISIS.

National Journal:  "The World Will Blame President Obama if Iraq Falls."

Biden calling Iraq "one of the greatest achievements of this administration."  What Democrats were saying about Iraq since the late 1990s.

NBC News.  Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

Ann Althouse believes Obama is trapped by his rhetoric.  She "pictures the enemy laughing" at Obama's speech on August 7, 2014.

A.B. Stoddard in The Hill calls Obama an "impotent president."

Obama promises never to allow genocide to go unpunished.

Michael Crowley at Time:  "How Obama Evolved on the Issue of 'Genocide' in Iraq."

CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION

The Gatestone Institute has a comprehensive list of all the locations in the world where radical Islam is killing Christians.  It is not just ISIS in Iraq and Syria where Christians face death.

Despite all these atrocities, exoduses, and even genocides, the mainstream media seems to spend every available moment airing images of displaced Palestinians and demonizing Israel for trying to defend itself. Yet Israel does not kill Palestinians because of their religion or any other personal aspects. It does so in the context of being rocketed and trying to defend itself from terrorism.

On the other hand, all the crimes being committed by Muslims against Christians are simply motivated by religious hate, because the Christians are Christian.

It is to the mainstream media's great shame that those who slaughter, behead, crucify, and displace people for no other reason than because they are Christian, rarely if ever get media coverage, while a nation such as Israel, which kills only in the context of being self-defense, and not out of religious bigotry, is constantly demonized.

DISAPPEARANCE OF HYMNALS IN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES

15 Reasons Why We Should Still Be Using Hymnals.

MILLENNIALISM

An historical overview and analysis of millennial thinking. The author examines millennial thinking, especially in the context of Christian thinking, from an historical perspective.  But even secular writers have toyed with this them.

RUSSIA, THE NEW LEADER OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION?

Conservative Pat Buchanan has written a very interesting article on Putin.  He reflects on Russian history and its Christian mission and how Putin is attempting to revive Russia's Christian mission.  Many Russians see the West as decadent and believe it will be Russia which will carry out the revival of moral values.  Putin rejects Marxism-Leninism as the way to revive Russia in favor of what he sees as Christian values.  In doing this he is in the tradition of Alexander Solzhenitsyn who saw the West as decadent decades ago.

Many Russians see the west as engaged in the "sewage of hedonistic secular culture".

Putin is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/is-god-now-on-russias-side/#315lQ2tzSQgJm569.99

Putin is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.Putin is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/is-god-now-on-russias-side/#315lQ2tzSQgJm569.99

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/is-god-now-on-russias-side/#315lQ2tzSQgJm569.99

Putin is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/is-god-now-on-russias-side/#315lQ2tzSQgJm569.99

MEDIA & CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION

The media is silent about Christian persecution.

The United Nations, Western governments, media, universities, and talking heads everywhere insist that Palestinians are suffering tremendous abuses from the state of Israel.  Conversely, the greatest human rights tragedy of our time—radical Muslim persecution of Christians, including in Palestinian controlled areas—is devotedly ignored.

 

The facts speak for themselves. Reliable estimates indicate that anywhere from 100-200 million Christians are persecuted every year; one Christian is martyred every five minutes. Approximately 85% of this persecution occurs in Muslim majority nations. In 1900, 20% of the Middle East was Christian. Today, less than 2% is.

BILL GOTHARD

I never was fond of this fellow and his teaching, but he was "adored" by so many conservative Christians. When his brother was in some kind of sex scandal many years ago, I thought something was not right.  Now the truth of Bill Gothard's sexual misconduct is coming out.  Authoritarian Christian leaders do not model Jesus Christ in any way.

COPTS IN EGYPT

The future for Egyptian Copts is rather grim.  So much for Islamic compassion.  Dhimmni status is the goal.

Patterns of persecution continued after the revolution and were reinforced. The number and scope of the attacks swelled dramatically and they were no longer limited to obscure villages or shantytowns but spread to the streets of Cairo and in front of the official TV headquarters. Church buildings were attacked and burned, mob violence against Copts was on the rise, and the new horror of forced evacuations from villages was becoming more common. Copts in small villages were increasingly forced to adhere to the Islamists’ standards and vision enforced on the ground. Accusations of blasphemy and insulting religion rose with Copts as their primary targets. Seven Copts today linger in Egyptian prisons as a result of court verdicts due to such accusations. The most worrisome aspect for Copts remains the participation of their neighbors, coworkers, and people they had grown up with in attacking them. Even if the Egyptian state ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood miraculously decided to intervene, the local hatreds are now impossible to contain.

THE BIBLE & THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Reviews of Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution by James P. Byrd.

Christianity Today. 

He matter-of-factly contends that sermons were more influential than political pamphlets in building popular support for independence, and he insists unequivocally that "preachers were the staunchest defenders of the cause of America." And yet the question that really interests him is not whether religion played an important role in the American founding but how it did so. More specifically, he wants to understand how colonists used the Bible in responding to the American Revolution.

Religion in American History. 

But the Revolutionary War also altered how Americans read and understood the Bible, challenging and changing interpretations of both the Old and New Testaments. Byrd mines his dataset of wartime sermons during the long eighteenth-century to great effect, demonstrating the interpretive challenges colonists faced in rebelling against the British Empire. Whereas the Bible had previously been marshaled to justify war against Catholic imperial rivals France and Spain and non-Christian American Indians (as recently as the French and Indian War of the 1750s and 60s), the predominantly Protestant colonists of North America were now facing off against the British Crown they’d previously held up as the standard and protector of the English-speaking Protestant Empire.

The Christian Century. 

Byrd also seems not to have noticed that the most bellicose sermons he quotes came from Presbyterian ministers—not Congregationalists or Methodists or even Baptists. Did most such sermons indeed come from Presbyterians, and if so, why? (His database appears to have contained only biblical references, not the denominational provenance of the preachers or even their geographical location.) Is the apparent Presbyterian predominance because of their regional concentration in the middle colonies, or is it because of Scottish and Presbyterian antipathy toward the British dating back for generations?

CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

According to Diarmaid MacCulloch writing in the Daily Beast, it is Jews and the Christians themselves who are responsible for the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. . .it is not Muslims.

ARE MEN BEING TURNED OFF BY CHURCH?

What one church in Canada did to increase male attendance. . .one thing was to balance the music offerings!

CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION IN SYRIA

From the Independent.  Christians feel betrayed by their Muslim neighbors.

The Diab family can never return to Maaloula. Not since the Christians of this beautiful and sacred town saw their Muslim neighbours leading the armed Nusrah Islamists to their homes. Georgios remembers how he peered over his balcony and saw Mohamed Diab and Ossama Diab and Yasser Diab and Hossam Diab and Khaled Turkik Qutaiman – all from Maaloula – walking in the street with men whom he said were dressed in Afghan-Pakistani clothes. “One of them had a Kalashnikov rifle in one hand and a sword in the other,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief.

SENATOR CRUZ TAKES ON OBAMACARE

I thought this picture was very interesting, especially if you are familiar with medieval paintings of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.  Or if you look at Orthodox icons of Bible figures or saints.  The gold ceiling behind Senator Cruz's head gives the sense of a halo over the head of Senator Cruz.  St. Cruz!



"Obama and Cruz Political Twins."  Interesting observations.

POLITICS & FAITH

A review of Ronald Stone's book on Tillich and Niebuhr's views on politics and faith.

REZA ASLAN'S BOOK

Reza Aslan is a Muslim who has written a popular book debunking Christianity.  Here is a response from Robert Spencer noting the errors in his writings.

CONTRASTING OBAMA STATEMENTS

Listen to what President Obama says about Muslims and what he doesn't say about Christians persecuted in Egypt. 

MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD ATTACKS CHRISTIANS IN EGYPT

From the Center for Law and Religion Forum.

“The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party has been inciting the anti-Christian pogroms on its web and Facebook pages. One such page, posted on August 14, lists a bill of particulars against the Christian Coptic minority, blaming it, and only it, for the military’s crackdown against the Brotherhood, alleging that the Church has declared a “war against Islam and Muslims.” It concludes with the threat, “For every action there is a reaction.” This builds on statements in the article “The Military Republic of [Coptic Pope] Tawadros,” carried on the MB website in July, about the Coptic Church wanting to “humiliate” Muslims and eradicate Islam….

Another report from the New York Times.

Hundreds of Islamists poured into the street, torching, looting and smashing the village’s two churches and a nearby monastery, lashing out so ferociously that marble altars were left in broken heaps on the floor.

 

MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD PERSECUTE CHRISTIANS

I was trying to find major media coverage (CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR) on the recent church burnings and persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt (Roman Catholics have also been persecuted).  I could not find any search engine turn up information that the US media is dealing with that issue with specificity.  However, this is what I found:

Al Jazeera has an excellent story. (But then I see a story of an Al Jazeera commentator calling Al-Sisi a Jew and you have to question its commitment to truth).

An Amnesty International story on FoxNews.

Another FoxNews story.

USA Today.

A June video on the issue at NBC news.  And a more recent clip on the Muslim Brotherhood denying it has burned churches.

The last story from NPR when I did a search was from May, 2011.

So it is a bit ironic that the most complete news source was an Arabic source.

AP WORLD HISTORY TEXTBOOK

A world history textbook used by the Advanced Placement Program contains one chapter on Islam and barely mentions Christianity and Judaism.  And I presume it does not deal with Hinduism or Buddhism to the extent they deserve either.

“If you don’t see it from the eyes of a parent, kids are going to take this book as gospel and believe that Christians and Jews were murderous barbarians and thank God the Muslims came along and the world is great,” he said.

For example, Workman said a reference to Mohammed and his armies taking over Medina states, “people happily accepted Islam as their way of life.”