eChurch Blog

I noticed earlier that the BBC news website had a headline about the funeral of a retired priest, but frankly couldn’t be bothered to read the article, even though I was quite surprised that a vicar’s funeral should make the BBC news website front page.

Now, thanks to the Biased BBC blog, I understand why:-

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE: GREEN VICAR SHOCK

It’s pretty darn unusual for the BBC website to cover the death of a local Church of England vicar; in fact, pretty much their only interest in Christianity and our established religion these days is in gay bishops. When I was in BBC local radio, it was only when a local bishop popped his clogs that we reached for our microphones.

Unless, that is, he’s a revered green campaigner. Such, apparently, was the Reverend Hereward Cooke, a vicar in the Norwich area, who cycled the 150 miles to Copenhagen to attend the UN summit in December, and there, tragically, died in his sleep. I’ve nothing against Mr Cooke, I am sure he was a god-fearing chap, though it is a pity that he thought ‘climate change‘ so important.

But to the BBC, of course, he’s a saint. Any mention of ‘green’ and ‘climate change‘ – no matter how inconsequential – is front page news.

How true.

I can’t help myself, I like this Pope:-

Catholic Culture

The Vatican has released the prayer intentions of Poep Benedict XVI for January 2010. The Pope’s general intention is: “That young people may learn to use modern means of social communication for their personal growth and to better prepare themselves to serve society.” His missionary intention is: “That every believer in Christ may be conscious that unity among all Christians is a condition for more effective proclamation of the Gospel.”

It took some folks quite a while to catch on.

Christians Unite

After attending church regularly during the 2008 Presidential campaign, Mr. Obama has not attended church on a regular basis since being elected President and has yet to find a church home.

Just this past week, the President did not attend any Christmas services with his family. President Obama also did not attend any Christmas services in 2008 shortly after he was elected President.

As a candidate, Mr. Obama made his Christian faith and involvement in a local church community with regular church attendance a key component of his campaign. Once he was elected President, there has been no relationship with a local church and he did not even attend any Christmas services celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ with his family.

The issue is not if a person has to attend church to be an effective President. They do not. The issue for Mr. Obama is one of integrity and honesty with the American people.

The President’s actions give the appearance, that his regular attendance during the campaign and his comments about how important his local church community was to his family, were not deeply held core beliefs but rather a crass political calculation to curry favor with the faith community.

Along with his lack of church involvement since being elected President, Mr. Obama has shown other troubling signs regarding the depth of his Christian faith. A faith which he says is a foundational aspect of his life.

A few examples:

The President covered up a white cross and a symbol for the name of Jesus at a Georgetown University speech.

President Obama did not publicly celebrate the National Day of Prayer at the White House yet celebrated Gay and Lesbian Pride Month as well as Islamic religious observations at the White House.

For the first time in 43 years, the Obama Administration banned a military flyover at a “God and Country Rally” in Nampa, Idaho.

On a White House Christmas tree, the President asked that no religious ornaments be sent it, yet they displayed an ornament with the image of the brutal dictator, Mao Zedong, a leader who oversaw the deaths of over 50,000,000 million of his own people.

The President issued strong support for a Senate Health Care Bill which included public monies to fund abortions.

In the midst of the worst economic downturn in decades, Team Obama spent $150, 000,000 on the Presidential Inauguration ignoring the needs of the poor and struggling across the country.

President Obama refused to meet with the Dali Lama to discuss human and religious rights after the Chinese government asked him not to.

Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Washington, D.C. based Christian Defense Coalition, adds these comments and observations,

“It is important to note that it was President Obama who made his regular church attendance and the importance of a local church community a major part of his campaign. He stated in the national press that he, ‘regularly attends church while on the campaign trail.’

“The issue is not whether a President has to attend church on a regular basis to be an effective President. They do not. The issue is one of integrity and honesty. To portray yourself as person of deep Christian faith and very involved in the life of the local church during the campaign and then abandon that position after you are elected reduces faith to a commodity and religion to a political tool.

“Finally, the White House has said they have not found a church home for President Obama and his family in Washington, D.C. because they do not want to be a disruptive factor for the local church. This is a completely disingenuous and misleading argument. The overwhelming majority of churches in the Washington would love to have the President and his family attend their church and would welcome them with open arms.

“Simply stated; Mr. President if your Christian faith and involvement with a local church means as much to you as you say it does please find a vibrant local community for you and your family to worship Christ.”

Ugh, just like the Telegraph, the BBC have rolled out a completely dreary and negative list of so called ‘top religious stories of 2009′.

BBC – Top Ten Religion Stories of the Year

Positive religious news obviously doesn’t sell.

Also, this very blog was started in ’09′ and is not even mentioned on the BBC list, how utterly ridiculous….

I’ll tell you what, I won’t just moan, but offer up here my number one story of 2009:-

Pakistan university Janitor Pervez Masih, rose above the barriers of caste, creed and sectarian terrorism. Despite being a Christian, he sacrificed his life to save the Muslim girls.

That’s better! And whilst I’m at it, this is my second:-

After 255 days in an Iranian prison, Maryam Rostampour and Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad told they will be released today!

Brave, brave girls, who would rather face the fury of the Islamic Iranian ‘judicial system’, than deny their faith in Jesus. What an example to all of us.

Now these are what I call ‘top stories of the year’.

Interesting little article in the Guardian by Sarah Posner, which seeks to answer the posed question: “What did the noughties mean for religion?”

In the early part of the noughties, Rev Jerry Falwell declared on national television that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US were the result of “throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked.”

“We have sinned against Almighty God, at the highest level of our government, we’ve stuck our finger in your eye,” agreed Pat Robertson, who was hosting Falwell on his 700 Club programme.

The mockery of the hellfire-breathing duo was swift and unrelenting. Robertson and Falwell, brand names of the religious right, had become embarrassments to evangelicalism. They had outlived their usefulness, and were too old, musty, and unabashedly nutty for the new evangelical cool.

As their stars were fading, evangelicalism’s emerging celebrities were employing savvy public relations specialists and rebranding themselves as your best friend, your entertainer, or your shrink – not the mouthpiece for a vengeful God. By the time Falwell died suddenly in 2007, a “new” kind of evangelical had seized the virtual pulpit of America’s attention.

The re-branding was the product of evangelicalism’s survival instinct in the face of the parody-ready Falwell prototype. One of America’s leading evangelicals is now Rick Warren, whose mega-bestseller, The Purpose-Driven Life (2002), begins: “This is more than a book; it is a guide to a 40-day spiritual journey that will enable you to discover the answer to life’s most important question: What on earth am I here for?”

The new evangelicals write books not about how God will smite you, but how God loves you and wants nothing more than your greatest personal, spiritual, and material fulfillment. The middle of the decade saw the publication of televangelist Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential (2004) and TD Jakes’ Reposition Yourself: Living Life Without Limits (2007). Joyce Meyer’s Seven Things That Steal Your Joy: Overcoming the Obstacles to Your Happiness (2004) and Approval Addiction: Overcoming Your Need to Please Everyone (2005) are equally at home at Bible study and coffee klatch, in the church bookstore and at Wal-Mart.

Even with the makeover, though, evangelicalism isn’t all smiles and gratification. Warren recently gave in to pressure to denounce a proposed bill in Uganda that would make homosexuality punishable by death in certain circumstances; while condemning the notion of criminalising gay people he still maintained homosexuality was unbiblical. (The new evangelicals hope to “cure” homosexuals rather than consigning them to hell.) He still considers abortion a “Holocaust,” even as he says he doesn’t take sides in political debates.

The new evangelicalism presents itself as being about a different kind of politics; unlike Falwell and Robertson, the new evangelicals operate in the realm of hearts and minds, not political precincts.

As the decade closed, though, a group of prominent evangelicals partnered with Catholics in signing the Manhattan Declaration, which promised civil disobedience of laws that supposedly violated their religious freedom by granting rights to gay people or reproductive freedom to women. A call to revival of the culture wars, the declaration highlights how the evangelical rebranding hasn’t stuck: as much as the movement tries to present itself as a path to personal fulfillment, it still aims to be a means of political dominance.

Oh this is a good result. Hopefully now the Malaysian authorities will return the 15,000 Bibles that they ‘seized’ simply because they refer to God as “Allah”, which of course is simply the Arabic word for God and has been used by Arab Christians for two millennia.

MySinchew

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 31 — It will be a glorious new year for some 850,000 Catholics in Malaysia.

In a landmark ruling today, the High Court here lifted the home minister’s ban against the Catholic church publishing the word “Allah” to refer to the Christian God in its weekly paper, Herald.

Counsel for the Herald, Porres Royan, told reporters outside the crowded court, “The court has granted the declaration that the applicant has the Constitutional right to use the word Allah. I believe the ministry is bound by the court’s decision.”

Senior Federal counsel Datuk Kamaludin Md Said said, “I was made to understand the ministry has already issued the permit for 2010.” The publishing permit for the Herald expires today.

He added that he will consult the ministry for new instruction, when asked about his next course of action.

The government had said that the ban was necessary to avoid confusing the majority Muslims in the country. Islam is the official religion in Malaysia.

But the church claimed the ban violates its constititutional rights to practice its religion freely.

According to Father Lawrence Andrew who edits Herald, the term “Allah” has been used by Christians in the region to refer to their God since four hundred years ago. He added that it is still actively used today.

Lawrence explained that “Allah” in the Christian context is used to refer to the trinitarian concept of “God the Father” which is different from the Muslim use of the verse to refer to the “one and only God.”

Herald‘s editor claims the use of the word has not died out and is still being used in church worship among indigenous East Malaysians, who form a substantial number of the Christian faithful in the country.

The church first took the government to court last year after the home ministry threatened to revoke its annual publishing permit for Herald, Malaysia’s only Catholic paper.

My goodness Rick Warren’s church is financially struggling. How can this happen to the ultimate “Purpose Driven” (Trademarked) church?

Rick Warren was cited by Time Magazine (2009) as one of the World’s most influential people and his ‘Purpose Driven Life’ books are the second best selling books of all time, surpassed only by the Bible. Rick Warren has the ear of Obama and gave the invocation at the crowning inauguration of Barack.

Here is some of the report:-

The Orange County Register

LAKE FOREST – Members of Saddleback Church say they expect the congregation to respond with a big “Amen” and cash to Pastor Rick Warren’s appeal for $900,000 by New Year’s Eve.

“This is a great opportunity for God to express himself,” said Jim Walls, from Trabuco Canyon, who received the news after coming home from a ski trip. “It’s a great opportunity for the church to honor God. It’s a great opportunity to raise the points of faith that our shepherd Rick Warren lives.”

Walls, 50, said he is not surprised by the request noting that in his Bible group two members have lost homes in the last two years.

“People have lost their homes, their jobs – are they bitter, No,” he said. “Are they still full of joy – yes. Do they know God loves them – yes. They have sacrificed their pride and given it to Jesus Christ. He knows the pride is the greatest evil. That’s how Satan tries to get us to be our own god.”

The 22,000-member plus congregation was informed of the church’s financial status in an “urgent letter” written by Warren and posted today.

“I have thrilling news to share with you below but first some seriously bad news: With 10% of our church family out of work due to the recession, our expenses in caring for our community in 2009 rose dramatically while our income stagnated. Still, with wise management, we’ve stayed close to our budget all year. Then… this last weekend the bottom dropped out.

“On the last weekend of 2009, our total offerings were less than half of what we normally receive – leaving us $900,000 in the red for the year, unless you help make up the difference today and tomorrow.”

Kim Offhaus said she and her husband will help and isn’t surprised by Warren’s request.

“I know that many people are affected by job loss and that Saddleback church is not immune,” she said. I’m confident we’ll support the church. It’s there to meet the needs of the people spiritually, physically and emotionally.”

Offhaus added that she believes the congregation will come together and raise the money just as they have during other crisis’s like a Tsunami fund a few years ago.

“When Pastor Rick asked for help then, we did it in one offering,” she said. “People at Saddleback are very generous.”

Fourteen year church member Eric Bezko, from Newport Beach called Warren’s request timely and legitimate saying most churches count on big donations at the end of the year.

“It’s nice he’s handled it like this,” said the 51-year-old. “It’s like people can give a Christmas present to the church.”

In Warren’s letter, he provides an opportunity for people to help.

YOU CAN HELP SAVE THE DAY 3 WAYS BEFORE JAN 1.

1. Give as large an end-of-the-year gift as you can to help avert this crisis. If we all do what God leads us to do, we’ll all be a part of a miracle.

2. Mail in your gift today. Gifts must be postmarked in 2009 to be posted as 2009 gifts for tax purposes. Mail to: 1 Saddleback Parkway, Lake Forest, CA 92630.

3. Drop your gift in the box at the front door of the Ministry Center at 1 Saddleback Parkway so you know for certain we get it TODAY or Thursday…

I’m not being funny, but couldn’t Rick himself use this as an opportunity to demonstrate and show us his faith and cough up the needed $900K. Let’s face it, Rick is not really suffering the impact of the recession as much as his ‘sheep’ and $900k is pretty small beer for him.

The real worry of course, is the question of whether all of those millions of churches around the world following the ‘Purpose Driven Church’ formulae, will also find themslevs in financial difficulty?

UPDATE

The finest and funniest post on this today, comes via the Unthinking Anglicans blog, by Revd Ivan Ackeroff:-

A Humble Appeal

Although time-zones differ around the world, Unthinking Anglicans is asking for donations of $1 million by midnight (GMT) tonight. What with the recession, and Christmas-giving being depleted, it is necessary to have loads of money to continue this website. Evangelical pastor Rick Warren, who generated controversy for giving the invocation at President Barack Obama’s inauguration, is asking followers to donate nearly $1 million by the year’s end. So are we. As bible-believers, we are committed to spreading the Good News of a babe born into poverty at Bethlehem. For this we need to be rich. Please send money immediately. We can then preach the same Gospel as Mr Warren. That Jesus entered Jerusalem on a dinosaur.

Absolutely and completely spot on.

Disgusting behaviour:-

Jerusalem Post

Incidents of haredim harassing Christian religious leaders and nuns in the capital are still being reported, according to the Polish honorary consul in the capital, Zeev Baran.

“Yeshiva students hurl insults at nuns and spit at them,” Baran told Israel Radio in a report aired Thursday.

He also said four monasteries were recently sprayed with graffiti and that dead cats and garbage were thrown onto the premises.

Baran further claimed that there had been an attempt to torch a monastery.

The Polish honorary consul met this week with Christian and haredi representatives in the Jerusalem Municipality to try and put a stop to the phenomena without involving the police, and it was agreed that the haredi representatives would act to curb the attacks.

An adviser on haredi affairs to the Jerusalem mayor condemned the harassment, saying, “These acts are similar to anti-Semitic attacks abroad.”

Check out the Rosh Pina Project for ongoing reports and analysis on Christian harassment and persecution in Israel.

You will have to forgive my church calendar ignorance, but apparently this is the time of year when the Christian Church remembers the ‘The Massacre of the Innocents’, when King Herod ordered the murder of all of the young male children in the village of Bethlehem, in a vain attempt to murder the ‘Child King’, Jesus Christ.

This from Wikki:-

The Massacre of the Innocents is an episode of mass infanticide by the King of Judea, Herod the Great, that appears in the Gospel of Matthew 2:16-18. The author, traditionally believed to be Matthew the Evangelist, reports that Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi. Like much of Matthew’s gospel, the incident is introduced as the fulfillment of passages in the Old Testament read as prophecies: “Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, A voice was heard in Ramah, Weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children.”^[1]

The infants, known in the Church as the Holy Innocents, have been claimed as the first Christian martyrs. Traditional accounts number them at more than ten thousand, though more conservative estimates put their number in the low dozens.

I know this will sound morbid, but I can’t help wondering what folks 2000 years ago, would think of our systematic, global ‘massacre of the Innocents’, in the form of abortions.

It is estimated that there were 961,000,000 abortions globally between 1920 – 2008. How does Herod’s crime compare with this slaughter of innocent human beings? The estimated current global monthly average is a staggering 1,206,000 abortions. Did you know that the USA alone is missing some 50,000,000 citizens through abortion? Is our generation as guilty as Herod?

Cross-post from the CyberBrethren Blog

Muslims and non-Muslims who live in nations where Islam is not the law of the land talk a lot about how Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Christians who live in Islamic nations tell a different story. I picked this up from Ron Dreher’s blog, who writes: “If you want to know what it’s really like to live under persecution for your Christian faith and culture, listen to this presentation by Bishop Thomas, a Copt who serves in Assiut, an area of intense Islamic persecution of Christians. I met him once, and the man is so luminous, and peaceful. It’s almost humiliating to be an American Christian, with such an easy life despite it all, and to hear what life is like for Christians in Egypt and elsewhere. If you don’t have time to watch the whole nine minute video, start at about 2:45: