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Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Pakistan Frees Asia Bibi from Blasphemy Death Sentence

Jailed Christian mother acquitted by Supreme Court after eight years. But threats of violent nationwide protests persist.

[This story is breaking and will be updated]

Today the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted Asia Bibi of committing blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad, a crime punishable with death in the Muslim nation, amid threats of countywide paralyzing protests and “horrible” consequences to justices and army generals if the Christian mother of five was released.

Bibi’s husband Ashiq Masih and their two daughters, currently in London, anxiously await her safe release and reunion with her after eight years of wrongful detention.

However, Agence France-Presse has reported that the Red Mosque [Lal Masjid]—a significant mosque in the capital, Islamabad, which played a pivotal role in the 1980s and ’90s in recruiting and training mujaheedin for the Soviet-Afghan war—filed a petition in the Islamabad High Court to put Bibi’s name “on the no-fly list” so that she could not leave the country. The Red Mosque “will become a center for the anti-government movement” if she is released.

Bibi was the first Christian woman sentenced to death under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, and only the second (after Ayub Masih, released in 2002) whose blasphemy case has gone up to the Supreme Court and been released.

Earlier this month, on October 8, a three-member bench—chief justice Mian Saqib Nisar and justices Asif Saeed Khosa and Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel—heard arguments from both sides, but reserved their verdict until today.

The hardline Islamist party, Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), held countrywide protests on October 14 and warned that the justices would meet a “horrible” end if Bibi was released. The TLP is “a staunch supporter of the blasphemy law and ...

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2yK5szd

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Anti-Semitism and Unforgivable Sin

Hate is weak. Mercy is strong.

We at Christianity Today were grieved to hear about the mass shooting at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh, claiming 11 lives. Sadly the local worshiping community has again become the place for the deranged to express their anger. It demonstrates how hate, which seems so strong, is often just cowardice, attacking the completely defenseless. So at such a time like this, let us not succumb to the fear of hate but remember how weak it really is.

It almost goes without saying that we will be praying that God’s miraculous mercy will be shown to the loved ones of the victims of this barbarous act. But we say it to make sure we do it. If hate looks strong but is ultimately weak, prayer is something that looks weak but is ultimately strong. So we pray as has the church in its liturgies for 2,000 years:

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy.

It also nearly goes without saying that anti-Semitism is ugly, wrong, immoral, and a hundred other adjectives. But it appears it needs saying time and again. Perhaps the one word Christians can add to the many denunciations is to say that anti-Semitism is a sin.

Such a quaint word in our day, but for Christians there is no better or stronger word to signal that an act is profoundly wrong. When the sinful act harms another human being, it brings into play not just the human dimension but also the divine.

“Against you, you only, have I sinned,” penned David the adulterer and murderer in Psalm 51. An odd thing to say when at least two human lives—Bathsheba and Uriel—were immediately wounded by David’s sin (as were many others years later). David’s psalm does not deny that dimension—for there are many, many psalms that lament harm done to ...

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2F0qorw

Anti-Semitism and Unforgivable Sin

Hate is weak. Mercy is strong.

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy.

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2zhWTuU

James MacDonald Sues Critics After 2,000 Leave Harvest Bible Chapel

The authors of a longtime watchdog blog and Julie Roys, who was reporting on the church, face defamation claims.

Pastor James MacDonald and Harvest Bible Chapel filed a lawsuit this month against two ex-members and former Moody Radio host Julie Roys, accusing them of spreading false information about the Chicago-area megachurch’s financial health and leadership.

The main targets of the church’s defamation complaint are Ryan Mahoney and Scott Bryant, who together run the blog The Elephant’s Debt. The site has culled stories of alleged mismanagement at Harvest since 2012, including claims of as much as $70 million in mortgage debt and a lack of accountability from its elder board.

Harvest has addressed some of the criticisms. MacDonald, its founder and senior pastor, apologized in 2014 to a trio of former elders who were disciplined for speaking out about a “culture of fear and intimidation.”

But the church challenges the blog’s characterizations of its financial standing and MacDonald’s character, wealth, and leadership. The lawsuit lists more than 57 points of disagreement with details published on The Elephant’s Debt.

Leaders at Harvest said the blog harmed its reputation enough that 2,000 people have left the congregation over the past few years. The multi-site church numbers 13,000 attendees across seven locations, making it one of the biggest in Illinois.

“Our goal was to end their prolonged and divisive effort to undermine the Elder governance of our church and to discredit our primary leaders,” elders said a statement to their congregation this month. “We have chosen to accomplish that by filing a civil suit in Cook County.”

Mahoney, a former teacher at Harvest Christian Academy, and Bryant left the church in 2010. They posted the bulk of their updates on The Elephant’s ...

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2F0e3DI

Why Science Can’t Tell Us How to Live

The quest to detach morality from divine revelation has only led to one dead end after another.

Can science tell us how we ought to behave? In Science and the Good, a book that crosses the boundaries of history, philosophy, and psychology, sociologist James Davison Hunter and philosopher Paul Nedelisky examine nearly 400 years of scientific attempts to discover the sources and meaning of morality. That effort, they conclude, has failed. Science can tell us the way things are but not the way things ought to be. In the language of philosophy, it can’t derive an “ought” from an “is.”

Hunter and Nedelisky define the scientific quest for morality as an attempt to use empirical methods to discover universal principles for ethical action. The scientists and ethicists engaged in it operate from the assumption that everything about life on earth can be explained by natural processes alone.

Before the dawn of the Enlightenment era, late-medieval scholastics such as Thomas Aquinas had produced moral theories based on theological, rather than naturalistic, premises. They believed that through observation of the created order, one could discover the purposes for which God had designed particular creatures or activities—and the moral laws that flowed from those purposes. But in the 17th century, the Dutchman Hugo Grotius and other political philosophers wanted to discover a moral code that could operate without invoking God.

With Christendom split into competing factions that were slaughtering each other over sectarian disagreements, Grotius and like-minded intellectuals doubted whether religion could create a universal moral consensus. Could science succeed where religion had failed? Instead of speculating about divine purposes for creation, Grotius thought, moral theorists should ask one question: ...

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Don’t Worry, There Are More Demons Than You Think

What Halloween gets right about spirits and why Christians have nothing to be afraid of.

“That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang,
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”
–William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73

William Shakespeare recognized that the coming of autumn was an apt time to reflect on his own mortality. We Americans don’t usually share in that impulse. We find just about any talk of death morbid and out of place. Most of the time. But then, halfway through the autumn season, we stumble across a holiday that (at least traditionally) relishes in darkness and death—Halloween.

Christians have long debated, and will continue to debate, whether they should engage in the various traditions that surround Halloween. If Halloween were only a day for little kids to dress up like their favorite princess or—for the more budget-conscious parent—ghosts (hello old bed sheet!), it’s unlikely Christians would raise much of a fuss. What bothers the anti-Halloween crowd isn’t current practice; it’s the history behind the holiday.

But what if the dark side of Halloween has something to teach us? I would go so far as to say that if the only relic left of Halloween is costumes and candy, we miss a dangerous truth—that dark powers are still at work in our world.

A Portal to the Other Side

Though the history of Halloween is a rather muddled affair, certain details are rather uncontested. We know, for instance, that commemorating October 31 is centuries old. As far back as the ninth century, Pope Gregory IV moved the “Feast of All Saints” day to November 1. The evening before this feast became known as “All Hallows’ Eve” and was, ...

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One-on-One with Dave Deuel on Disability Concerns and the Gospel Today

"I focus very specifically on identifying and helping young disability ministry leaders."

Ed: How long have you been involved in Lausanne International and what is your current role?

Dave: Although I have been interested in Lausanne for quite a few years, I first was invited to participate in Cape Town in 2010. I joined Lausanne in 2013 by personal invitation of Joni Eareckson Tada, who had held the position of Senior Associate of Disability Concerns from the inception of the issue group. Since then, the role of Senior Associate has changed as well as the title, which is now Catalyst of Disability Concerns.

After the Lausanne Young Leaders Gathering in Jakarta in 2016, I was invited to participate on the leadership team of the YLGen Mentor Community. The focus of my participation is on training and resources.

Ed: Tell me about your current roll and what you do.

Dave: As Disability Concerns catalyst, I focus very specifically on identifying and helping young disability ministry leaders. My role as Senior Research Fellow at the Christian Institute of Joni and Friends gives me an effective platform to assist in job placement, advanced education, ministry publications, and so forth.

My more recent Lausanne role as member of the leadership team of YLGen gives me the ideal position to mentor young disability leaders as well as facilitate the discipleship and mentoring of those young leaders. God has given me just the right combination of roles in Lausanne to do my work, which focuses specifically on developing young leaders for disability ministries.

Ed: Tell me about the gospel and the church in your part of the world.

Dave: As former Academic Dean of a consortium of 17 training ministries scattered around the world and over 60 daughter-training ministries, I have made contacts in and have ongoing commitments to quite a ...

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