eChurch Blog

One of my absolute fav Christian bloggers Fr. Stephen Smutts of Biblical Paths is hanging up his Biblioblogging credentials to focus on all things ecclesiastical and theological, and in the process will be moving to his new blog entitled: Faith in Hand.

eChurch blog is rightly not classed as a Biblioblog and is considered by the community to be a theo-blog. Dr Jim West – who is the Biblioblog Numero Uno – often speaks of absolutely EVERYTHING as grist for the theological mill. I find this very encouraging and gives my blogging a sense of worth, even if I’m not up with the intellectual biblio-giants.

I blog through the prism of my faith and theological understanding, albeit on a diverse range of societal issues, but then again, my academic background is in the social sciences.

Fr Stephen Smutts was kind enough to mention me (Stuart) in his final post and for that I feel particularly honoured. Be sure to sign up for his new blog, I have already done so.

Whilst on the subject of Christan blogging, today I happened upon a new [to me] blog called: A Minor Friar, and he had these encouraging words to say regarding his own blogging:

In the same way, I must remember that this blog is a ministry greater than my idea of it. Because of the particularity of my own state in life and the questions and issues that preoccupy me in the current moment of my life, I may be more conscious of parts of the audience that share some of these characteristics. But that doesn’t mean that the blog is only for them or even primarily for them. The blog is what God wants it to be. It’s for whoever God inspires to visit. Any fruit that comes of my little rants and reflections is God’s work, accomplished in the economies of grace so expansive and wonderful that they can even work through the meager and self-indulgent efforts of a lukewarm and distracted little religious priest like me.

…..continue reading

Do read the whole post as it’s quite encouraging and applicable for all of us Christian bloggers, and I’ll be sure to keep an eye on his blog from now on.

And the ‘religious cleansing’ of Middle Eastern Arab Christians at the hands of Islamic extremists goes on….as promised…..

AFP

BAGHDAD — Two Iraqi Christians have been killed in a new wave of apparently coordinated bomb attacks in the capital just two months after militants massacred 46 Christians in a church in the city.

A total of 14 bombs were placed at different Christian homes late on Thursday, an interior ministry official said on Friday.

“Two Christians were killed and 16 wounded” by the 10 bombs that went off, while security forces were able to carry out controlled detonations of four other devices, the official said.

The only deadly attack was in the central district of Al-Ghadir, where a home-made bomb exploded at around 8:00 pm (1700 GMT), killing the two Christians and wounding three others.

Most of the 14 bombs, which targeted Christian homes in a total of seven different areas of the city, were in Karrada in central Baghdad, the official said.

Three devices wounded three Christians in that area, while all four of the controlled detonations were also in Karrada.

Another bomb targeted a house in Al-Ilam neighbourhood in southern Baghdad, wounding one person; two bombs wounded four people in Dora in the south of the city and one bomb in Saidiya, also in the south, wounded two people.

Another device targeted a Christian home in Yarmuk in western Baghdad, wounding one, and a house in Khadra, also in the west of the city, was targeted by a bomb that wounded two people.

The wave of attacks comes almost two months to the day after an October 31 attack by militants on Our Lady of Salvation church in central Baghdad, which left the 44 worshippers, two priests and seven security forces members dead.

….continue reading

Whilst our celebrations for the new year begin in earnest today and culminate at midnight tonight, spare a thought for the poor Russians (and ex-Russian nations) who bear the burden of a fourteen day, double New Year celebration.

Their celebrations begin tonight on the thirty first of December, the New Year of the Gregorian Calendar and continue through to the fourteenth of January, which is the New Year of the Julian Calendar.

And don’t forget that the Eastern Orthodox traditions have Christmas to celebrate in-between, on the 7th January, in accordance with the Julian calendar.

Poor souls….

A few links I found interesting for one reason or another:

Telegraph – Damian Thompson – The Muslim population has grown from 1.65 million to 2.87 million since 2001, say researchers. What does this mean for liberal Britain?

One Daring jew – A b(i)ography of Truth

The Anchoress First Things – “A Terrifying Sign of the Times” – Fr. Robert Barron looks at Pope Benedict XVI’s Christmas Message.

Point of no Return – Why is the Church blaming Jews, not Islamists?

Roger E Olson – Another basic (pre-biblical) choice in theology

Christianity Today – Christ of the Klingons – A physicist and a philosopher envision God’s design in the beautiful equations of string theory.

Guardian – Pope’s astronomer says he would baptise an alien if it asked him

Is this not the age old question, to wit, why do the mainstream media gravitate toward the unrepresentative, lone, extremist voice to represent an entire community?

Fundamentalist extremist Christian Stephen Green of “Christian Lone Voice” has been featured previously on this blog as recently as last week, when he berated the BBC for their rendition of the Nativity. The Express carried his comments as if representative of all ‘furiously angered’ Christians, even though the entirety of the Christian Interweb thought it fantastic. Clayboy and Bartholomew both highlighted this anomaly.

Anyway, Archdruid Eileen notifies us (Via Pink News) of the fact that the BBC have trotted out good ol’ Stephen Green to garner his views on the ‘gay’ surrogate adoption of a baby by Sir Elton John and Mr David Furnish.

Now please understand, this is not a post on the rights or wrongs of gay adoption. This is a post which asks WHY someone like Stephen Green is asked for his opinion in such cases?

Archdruid Eileen makes some pertinent observations and this comment for me nails it:

The people commenting on the Pink News article seem to think that the BBC is showing itself to be anti-gay. The other possibility is that – showing  Stephen Green as the chosen Christian representative – the BBC are actually anti-Christian. For he doesn’t do Christians any favour, and the BBC must know that Stephen Green will make anything else look more appealing than his own views.

Read All

The moderate, nuanced, intelligent voice is most certainly not of much interest to the mainstream media narrative.

There has to be a fight against extremist positions dominating the public discourse, and frankly I feel the online atheist community have an effective strategy, and that is one of ridicule.

The following comes courtesy of Fr. Stephen Smutts:

First of all, like the rest of Christianity, Catholicism is no longer European.

In fact, Catholicism is, surprisingly, a bit less European than Christianity as a whole.  25.6% of all Christians live in Europe today while only 23.9% of Catholics are European.  This is because the Catholic portion of Europe dropped from 44.4% to 37.8%.

In 1910, over 70% of Catholics lived in the west.  Only 32% of Catholics live in Europe, North America, and Oceania today…

We need to realize that European Protestantism has also taken a big dive: from 15.1% of Europeans in 1910 to 9.3% today. Protestant Christians in western Europe dropped from 31.7% to 17.6%.  Pretty obviously, the Second Vatican Council can not be held responsible for that development!

The de facto center of Catholicism is now Latin America. Since Catholics make up roughly 50% of the world’s Christians in 2010, it makes sense that the Atlas of Global Christianity observes that the new global language of Christianity as a whole is Spanish.  However, we need to remember that the Catholic population of Latin America dropped from 90.3% to 80.5% in the last hundred years while South America’s Catholics declined from 92.4 to 79.9%.

You may be asking, is there any good news out there?  Indeed there is.

Between 1910 and 2010, Catholicism grew faster than the human race in Africa, Asia, North America, and Oceania.

Catholic numbers soared in Africa, from 0.6% of the population in 1910 to 16.4% in 2010.  Middle Africa is now over 44% Catholic.  Catholics also more than doubled in Asia (from 1.3 to 3.3%) and rose to 25.1% in Oceania.  61% of the people of Micronesia are now Catholic while North American Catholics grew from 16% to 24.2% of the population.

But Catholicism’s share of the human race (16.7%) has hardly budged because the losses in Europe and Latin America offset the growth elsewhere.  Still growing only 0.1% is a bit better than Christianity did as a whole – dropping 1.6% since 1910…

There is a lot more with graphs here.

I’m off to London to visit family and so there will be a short blogging hiatus, which is good timing as I’m experiencing bloggers block and am tired of bearing – and reading – bad news.

Things are so bad currently that when confronted with the Fifteen Films Meme challenge – List the first fifteen films you can recall that will always stick with you, in no more than fifteen minutes – I could only muster the brain power to recall four films, and three of them were nicked from the lists of others!

The Bourne Identity

The Matrix

Munich

The Boy in Striped Pajamas

[add here Pixar films. My young son reliably informs me there are currently 11 Pixar movies released and so that works rather nicely]

By the way, if you’re a blogger and happen to read this, consider yourself tagged in to the Fifteen Films Meme challenge.

I shall return later in the week, refreshed,  invigorated, motivated, and hopefully interesting enough to be a blogger you look forward to reading more of in 2011.

Lest we forget.

Do be sure to check out Lisa’s update on Adam of Baghdad – the extraordinarily brave three-year-old boy.

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas.

May the joy of the angels,
the simplicity of the shepherds
the love of Joseph and Mary
and the peace of the Christ-child
be God’s gifts to you this Christmastide

A Prayer of Thanks Before A Christian Christmas Meal

Our Heavenly Father, we give thanks for the birth of your Son and the celebration of His life. Help us to remember that this festive day is set aside to celebrate all He has done for us. We give thanks for our family and friends, and for the blessing that you have given us so we can plan and enjoy a Christmas meal together. We thank you for your provision of a home, a kitchen, for loving hands and for the abundance of food upon this table. May we remember that there are those who have no families, no place at a table, and no one with whom to share a Christmas dinner. Help us to listen to your wee small voice and to obey that wee small voice so we can reach out and help their Christmas be a more merry one .We ask that you would bless our time around this Christmas table and we ask you to bless our food. May our hearts and attitudes, our actions and our lives be blessings to you. Through Jesus Christ, Your Son, we pray. Amen.

Following is the transcript of the Pope’s Radio 4 Thought For the Day message broadcast earlier.

You can listen here.

Recalling with great fondness my four-day visit to the United Kingdom last September, I am glad to have the opportunity to greet you once again, and indeed to greet listeners everywhere as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ.

Our thoughts turn back to a moment in history when God’s chosen people, the children of Israel, were living in intense expectation.

They were waiting for the Messiah that God had promised to send, and they pictured him as a great leader who would rescue them from foreign domination and restore their freedom.

God is always faithful to his promises, but he often surprises us in the way he fulfils them

The child that was born in Bethlehem did indeed bring liberation, but not only for the people of that time and place – he was to be the Saviour of all people throughout the world and throughout history.

And it was not a political liberation that he brought, achieved through military means: rather, Christ destroyed death for ever and restored life by means of his shameful death on the Cross.

And while he was born in poverty and obscurity, far from the centres of earthly power, he was none other than the Son of God.

Out of love for us he took upon himself our human condition, our fragility, our vulnerability, and he opened up for us the path that leads to the fullness of life, to a share in the life of God himself.

As we ponder this great mystery in our hearts this Christmas, let us give thanks to God for his goodness to us, and let us joyfully proclaim to those around us the good news that God offers us freedom from whatever weighs us down; he gives us hope, he brings us life.

Dear friends from Scotland, England, Wales and indeed every part of the English-speaking world, I want you to know that I keep all of you very much in my prayers during this Holy season.

I pray for your families, for your children, for those who are sick, and for those who are going through any form of hardship at this time.

I pray especially for the elderly and for those who are approaching the end of their days.

I ask Christ, the light of the nations, to dispel whatever darkness there may be in your lives and to grant to every one of you the grace of a peaceful and joyful Christmas.

May God bless all of you.