eChurch Blog

Whilst bloggers lament the ‘plight’ of the UK, at least they can currently blog about it free from government interference, unlike in Saudi Arabia:

Elders of Ziyon:

Saudi Arabia has enacted stringent new regulations forcing some bloggers to obtain government licenses and to strongarm others into registering. In addition, all Saudi news blogs and electronic news sites will now be strictly licensed, required to “include the call to the religion of Islam” and to strictly abide by Islamic sharia law. The registration and religion requirements are also being coupled with strict restrictions on what topics Saudi bloggers can write on–a development which will essentially give Saudi authorities the right to shut down blogs at their discretion.

The new regulations went into effect on January 1, 2011

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Fr. Stephen Smuts alerts us of a new trend in Europe known as ‘de-baptism’:

……there are some in Europe who are formally renouncing their faith through a process they call “de-baptism.” In effect they write to the parish where they were baptized and asked that their name be blotted out from the book of life, also known as the Baptismal Register. Of course the Catholic Church does not remove the names, but does make a notation that they have formally renounced the Christian faith, that they have renounced their baptism.

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Apostasy Association? There is actually an organization that exists to encourage and facilitate such renunciations.

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Of course, this is nothing new and follows the trend for US atheists to be “offically de-baptized” in a ritual using a hair dryer.

Sad.

The Mind & Soul website has an article on healing and mental illness written by Dr Rob Waller. I’m only half way through it and as I’m a little preoccupied today I’m posting the link here for my benefit, and for anyone else that may be interested.

If you do read it let me know your thoughts:

Mind & Soul – Healing and Mental Illness

Although the research behind this is US focusssed, it could probably be applied to the UK. I recently commented on a previous post that in my opinion apathy and indifference are the majority response to our faith, and this piece certainly bears that out in relation to Generation Y:

The Christian Post

Millenials, those born between 1980 and 2000, are not anti-Christian or anti-religion, but they are, in general, just not interested in religion, says a new book based on a survey of members of this generation.

An apathetic attitude toward religious and spiritual matters is common among members of this generation, according to The Millennials by Thom Rainer, president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Research, and his son Jess, a Millenial born in 1985. Members of this generation are likely to care less about spiritual matters than those from previous generations, the Rainers wrote.

Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of this generation rarely or never attend religious services, according to the survey conducted by LifeWay on 1,200 Millenials. And spiritual matters was ranked sixth, below friends and education, in a list based on an open-ended question on what is important to respondents.

“The [Baby] Boomers began the decline [in caring about religion] right after the Builder generation. Then came Gen X where it decreased again. And the Millenials are even less so (religious),” Thom Rainer explained to The Christian Post.

Rainer suggested that the church has become less effective in reaching the Millenials because members of this group tend to be a high commitment generation and they see most of what takes place in churches as low commitment so they are not interested. Another possible reason is that three-fourths of these Millennials come from an unchurched background, meaning they have no Christian faith background.

“They are not anti-religious or anti-Christian, but they tend to be totally ambivalent towards anything religious or Christian,” he said.

The survey also found that Millennials are “a confused generation spiritually.” Although, 65 percent of this generation describe themselves as Christian – notably many of them do not know or practice the basic teachings of the faith – only 26 percent say they believe they will go to heaven when they die because they have accepted Christ as their savior.

Millenials are also confused over who Jesus is. They were divided on whether Jesus is the only way to salvation and if he was sinless.

“In summary we can say that the church’s challenge is not overcoming an adversarial attitude from the Millennials. The true challenge is overcoming apathy,” the Rainers say in the book. “Christianity is not the belief of the vast majority of this generation. And they believe the American church to be one of the least relevant institutions in society.”

An astounding 70 percent of Millennials agree that American churches are irrelevant today.

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Some illuminating stats on British Evangelicals over at British Religion in Numbers, here’s a taster:

BELIEFS: 98% agree that their faith is the most important thing in life and 96% that it is the key factor in their decision-making. 96% believe that Jesus is the only way to God. 96% consider the Bible to be the inspired word of God and 82% say that, in its original manuscript, it is without error. 92% believe in miraculous gifts of the Spirit. 59% believe in a physical hell, but 27% are unsure and 14% disbelieve. 39% think evolution and Christianity are incompatible, 43% that they are not.

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The more we learn about this Universe, the more I marvel at the God who created it.

The Hubble Space Telescope got its first peek at a mysterious giant green blob in outer space and found that it is strangely alive.

The bizarre glowing blob is giving birth to new stars, some only a couple million years old, in remote areas of the universe where stars do not normally form.

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Parts of the green blob are collapsing and the resulting pressure from that is creating the stars. The stellar nurseries are outside of a normal galaxy, which is usually where stars live.

That makes these “very lonely newborn stars” that are “in the middle of nowhere,” said Bill Keel, the University of Alabama astronomer who examined the blob.

The blob is the size of the Milky Way, the galaxy that includes the Earth, and it is 650 million light years away. Each light year is about 6 trillion miles.

The blob is mostly hydrogen gas swirling from a close encounter of two galaxies; it glows because it is illuminated by a quasar in one of the galaxies. A quasar is a bright object full of energy powered by a black hole.

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And in this created Universe is of course mankind, created in the image of God, and I for one often marvel at man. Our abilities to develop instruments such as the Hubble Telescope, our new insights into the created order, or even our ability to achieve unusual tasks, such as engraving a periodic table on a human hair using nanotechnology, causes me to pause and wonder at the God who created us.

Psalm 19:1

The heavens declare the glory of God;  the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

This is lovely cheery tonic for the heaviness. 4 hours of toddler (9 months old) playtime, time-lapsed into 2 minutes. Via Catholic Vote:

The following quote from Augustine is shamelessly pilfered from Clayboy.

Oh, and whilst on the subject of Clayboy, if you get a chance hop over and check out these posts, his astonishment over Biblical literalism and creationism have been an ongoing source of much mirth and merriment to me.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

Courtesy of Jonathan Robinson over at Xenos Theology:

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

Modern March – Christians and Internet Presence: A Roundtable with Wax, McCoy, Wilson, and Smith

Accepting Abundance – The Big Bang and Primacy of Reason

Carl Beech – The exploitation must be stopped.

Spectator – Why don’t all these disaffected Brits convert to Christianity instead?

Lisa Graas – Is the Catholic Right Playing a “Sinister Game”?

The Catholic Thing – Benedict and the Koran

First Things – The Atheist Gives Us Nothing

NCRegister – Pope rips anti-Christian tide in major foreign policy speech