"You've really got to stop drinking out of lead cups."




Via Mark Shea.

How the United Methodist Church developed that winning policy of inclusiveness...

...that has caused its numbership to decline by over half in the last 30 years.

According to Karen Booth writing at the Ben Witherington Blog it was outsider activists who targeted the UMC, the PCUSA and the ELCA:

In 2006 the Roundtable released its first joint research project: a landmark study entitled David v. Goliath. More than half of the report focused on pro-gay caucuses in the Protestant mainline churches—“the backbone of American religion.” If these denominations could be won over to the pro-gay cause, “it would … be a tremendous moral victory for the LGBT community,” said the report. Three of the denominations (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church U.S.A, and The United Methodist Church) were singled out for special attention specifically because of their denominational decision-making processes. Because their legislative gatherings were essentially democratic in nature, they were more susceptible to pro-gay advocacy than other autocratic or autonomous Christian bodies. Because they were conducted on a church-wide basis, greater numbers of people, including those that lived internationally, could be reached. So their general assemblies and conferences were identified as the best settings to introduce and foster proposals for theological and moral revision.

David V. Goliath also challenged secular activists to recognize the political advantages of working with people of faith and to support their new friends with intellectual, political, and financial resources. In 2005 the Human Rights Campaign (the largest national group with over one million members) harkened to the call, starting its “Religion and Faith” Program with the help of a former United Methodist student pastor named Harry Knox. Committed to influencing the “moveable middle,” the Program’s most recent focus has been Hispanic believers. A comprehensive pro-gay resource entitled A La Familia was written and edited by retired United Methodist pastor Ignacio Castuera and Iliff Seminary Professor Miguel De La Torre.

And:

Of the three mainline denominations specifically targeted in the David V. Goliath report, only The United Methodist Church has managed to hold the line on traditional moral teaching. But leaders from the Reconciling movement have gone on record predicting that the 2012 General Conference will finally reward them with long-awaited victory. At the very least, they expect compromise legislation to be passed that would enact policies stating United Methodist are “not of one mind” about homosexuality. For Lutherans and Presbyterians, that was the first step toward the downhill slide to full inclusion.

In order to prevent that, morally traditional General Conference 2012 delegates will have to be winsome and outspoken witnesses to the biblical truth about sexuality. Moderate delegates, some of whom may be stuck in the gray area of the “moveable middle,” need to realize that compromise has not served us well for the last 40 years and could very well destroy us in the long run. And all the delegates, even those who are liberal or progressive, should express outrage over the non-Methodist and non-Christian “outsider” influence and money that have been manipulating our system.

We in The United Methodist Church cannot afford to tolerate that kind of unscrupulous interference, and we must not allow it to sway us to overturn two millennia of Christian moral teaching on a cultural whim. If we do, then perhaps we are no longer the Church that Christ founded and for which he died.

No wonder the Methodists felt that they had a winning proposition in "inclusiveness"; they were getting glad-handed by a bunch of non-Methodist secularists. That must have made them feel that they were "that close" to winning over a whole new population to Methodism.

Little did it occur to them that growth does not come from alienating the 90% of your constituency for 2%, particularly when the 90% can and - all things being equal - will have children and the 2% - all things being equal - won't.

And there's a lesson in there for all Christian churches.

Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus - Muslim Version.

The "religion" is Christianity.

This is a very serious presentation of the Muslim view of Christianity and Christ.

It's worth watching, not the least reason for which is that it reminds us why theology and philosophy still matter.

The Blood of Martyrs.

Conversions to Christianity follow Hindu attack on Christians.

Pagan Parallels.

This is a good site for debunking the tired wheeze that the life of Christ is reconstructed pagan myths.

Doubling Down.

C. Michael Patton goes "all in" after his post arguing his view that "Roman" Catholics cannot be "true scholars" by posting an essay on "Why I hate Roman Catholics."

The title of the essay is a kind of passive-aggressive rebuke to people who criticized his first essay.  Patton seems to be arguing that he has been unfairly attacked for hating Catholics, when, in truth, he has the most open mind imaginable and actually spent a year investigating Catholicism.

As they say, "whatever."  The responses to Patton's first essay didn't accuse him of "hating Catholics."  The responses were actually quite calm and intellectual critiques of Patton's cognitive dissonance in denying the beam in his eye, namly that he has first principles he cannot deny if he wishes to remain an evangelical and a true scholar - such as the Resurrection or the Incarnation. The comments are interesting and worth reading.

In response to this most recent post, Bryan Cox - who certainly qualifies as a "true scholar" - comments:

You might remember that scene in The Hunt for Red October where a Russian sub named the Konovalov fires a torpedo at another sub named the Red October, but the captain of the Konovalov was so confident that his torpedo would hit the Red October (because it was at such close range), he had deactivated the safety mechanisms on the torpedo, so that it became armed right at launch. But the torpedo misses the Red October, and subsequently locks on to the Konovalov instead, at which point, just before the torpedo impacts the Konovalov and destroys it, the Konovalov’s assistant officer turns to the Konovalov’s captain and says,


“You arrogant ass. You’ve killed us!”

I was reminded of that scene, when I read your comment above: “However, when it comes to theology and, most specifically, exegetical studies of the Bible, I don’t think he or she can be a scholar, since they lack the academic freedom to disagree with Rome.”

That’s because if you replace the word ‘Rome’ with the words ‘Jesus and the Apostles,’ you’ve just destroyed the possibility of Christian scholarship. And you have no non-arbitrary way of preventing that term-replacement.

Cox gets extra points for the pop culture reference.
 
Jeremy at Unsettled Christianity offers this interesting insight, namely after his baptism, he couldn't be a non-Catholic scholar even if he tried:
 

Upon returning to the Church, however, I was surprised to find out that my marriage was invalid … yes, that’s right invalid. The Church considered it invalid in the sense that it was not sacramental. I literally could have gotten divorced and gotten a quick annulment at that point (Thankfully my wife didn’t seize on her last opportunity for freedom as we had our marriage convalidated shortly after I returned to the Church and she started the RCIA process). And why was my marriage invalid? “Lack of Canonical Form.” In other words, I had not, as a Roman Catholic, obeyed the canonical requirement of being married in a Catholic Church witnessed by a priest or deacon (or with a dispensation from the bishop of my archdiocese outside of the Church).


But, wait a second … I was an ordained Southern Baptist minister not a Roman Catholic. Well, as it turns out, a person is Roman Catholic by virtue of their baptism. I discussed this with my instructor when trained to be an advocate for annulment cases. I knew this from the Catechism (paragraph 1280) at that point: “Baptism imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual sign, the character, which consecrates the baptized person for Christian worship. Because of the character Baptism cannot be repeated.” But, he put it a bit more eloquently; he said something to the effect: “you may have gotten wet, but you didn’t get baptized again.” Baptism is an indelible mark, and not even becoming an ordained Southern Baptist could remove it.

Now, at the same time I was a Southern Baptist minister, I was also getting my MA in Old Testament and Hebrew language and starting my doctoral program in Biblical Languages (which praise and glory to God I just finished). I get my years mixed up, but I believe I gave my first SBL presentation and wrote a peer-reviewed journal article before returning to the Church (though these did not deal with theology, I obviously dealt with theology in local church settings). It’s possible my papers and publication came a little after, but regardless of the time frame there is a sense in which I was a scholar before returning to the Catholic Church.

So, this presents an interesting situation. While I was a Southern Baptist, I was still, according to the Church, a Roman Catholic bound by canon law with with regard to my marriage, so much so that I could have had a short form annulment. And, I was also a scholar in the area of Biblical Studies and Biblical Languages. Ironically, I believe there is some real sense in which I could have been considered a Catholic biblical scholar when I was a Southern Baptist minister, at least in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Otherwise the Church holding me responsible for canon law wouldn’t make a great deal of sense. Again, baptism is indelible.

Now, would I have been a Catholic scholar faithful to the Magisterium of the Church? Of course not. Would I have been a scholar with a mandate from a bishop to teach Catholic theology? Of course not. But, a Catholic is Catholic by virtue of their baptism, not because of agreement to doctrinal formulations. Of course, the Church would hope that faithfulness to Magisterial teaching would follow upon baptism, otherwise there might not be that much point in remaining Catholic. And, there are ways of being excommunicated or even excommunicating oneself. I suppose even I could have pleaded for excommunication. But, I don’t imagine that this is where the majority of Catholics who disagree end up.

The Growth of the Chinese Christian Church...

...is alarming Communist officials.

The numbers speak for themselves. A survey conducted in 2006 suggests that about 300 million Chinese (31% of the population) practice a religion. Government estimates put that number far lower. Among Chinese religious practitioners, two-thirds declared themselves Buddhists or Taoists. The remaining third (100 million people) are Christians.


A leaked report dating from the same year suggests that the real number of Chinese Christians is closer to 130 million – up from just 5 million in 1949 when Mao came to power. Roughly four-fifths are Protestants. In the past 60 years, in other words, the number of Chinese Christians has multiplied by a factor of 25. They now make up between 7%-10% of the population, meaning that Christianity is quite possibly the second religion in China.

The growth of Christianity is all the more remarkable considering it occurred despite decades of bloody persecution under Mao, who viewed the religion as a “foreign” doctrine used to serve the interests of capitalist imperialism. Christianity has now adapted to the local realities and is no longer seen as a strange faith imported from elsewhere. Millions of new devotees are convinced that China will become Christian in a matter of two or three decades.

“I believe Christianity will become the main religion, but not the only one,” says historian Fan Yafeng. A specialist on the Chinese conversion movement, Yafeng is now under close surveillance. In a recent interview, he told Le Nouvel Observateur that by eradicating local religions, the Communist Party had involuntarily made conversion easier for the country’s elite.

“Still, we should remember that the peasants, who were once converted to Christianity by foreign-born ministers, are the ones who managed to keep the flame alive despite facing terrible repression,” says Yafeng. “As soon as they could, they became missionaries themselves. In the 1980s, they converted up to 80% of the inhabitants of certain districts in Henan and Zhejiang.”

And Calvin appears to be very influential:

So when the intellectuals started looking for a spiritual outlet, they had all this groundwork they could rely on. Suspicious of an overly emotional faith, they first focused their attention on theoretical sources, translating the works of Saint Augustine or Calvin, whose doctrine they eventually chose.


“(Calvin) allows us to understand the links between individual faith and society better than anyone else,” says Yu Jie, another well-known Protestant thinker and dissident. “We support the idea of a clear distinction between religion and politics, but without making any concessions on our relationship with God. How does one best practice their faith within their family, at work and in the society? Calvin thought a great deal about this questions and he is the one guiding us today.”

It seems clear that the Christianity now being promoted by intellectuals such as Yu Jie is having an influence on China’s recent civil rights movement. More than half of the lawyers bravely fighting on behalf of victims of various abuses are recent Protestant converts. It is from the notion of love, absent from their country’s traditional philosophical heritage, that they draw the energy and ideals necessary for their actions. “We want to give this society, which is sick with hatred, an evolution model based on love and forgiveness,” says Yu Jie.

Casuistry and Catholic Guilt...

...or why can't I be totally happy about anything.

It is, I guess, a tribute to the effort of the West to remain civilized that there is any debate about the proper reaction to the news of the death of Osama bin Laden.  Among the full-throated ululations of joy are the occasional kill-joy voices reminding us that bin Laden was, after all, a fellow human being and, moreover, someone who we are commanded to love, even as we recognize that he is our enemy.

Lisa Graas has collected a cross-sampling of the Catholic blogosphere's reaction to the news of bin Laden's assassination.  Included in the sampling is this statement from a "Vatican representative":

Fr. Federico Lombardi, Vatican Spokesman:


“Osama bin Laden – as we all know – was gravely responsible for promoting division and hatred between peoples, causing the end of countless innocent lives, and of exploiting religions to this end.

“Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibility of each and every one of us before God and before man, and hopes and commits himself so that no event be an opportunity for further growth of hatred, but for peace.”

It is a good that bin Laden is dead, and it is an evil.  It is good that bin Laden is dead because he was a murderer and it is good that justice is done to murderers.  It is an evil because bin Laden was a man with an immortal soul that may very well be starting an eternity of suffering lost to good, and the loss of any soul is a victory of sin and we shouldn't rejoice in the victory of sin.

So, I guess, there ought to be some conflicting feelings about the death of evil man, if only because no one is ever ontologically evil.

If we look for some guidance, we find this issue parsed on a much higher plane than ours in the part of the Suma Theologica not written by St. Thomas Aquinas.  In the Supplement to the Third Part, Question 94, to the question of whether the saints rejoice in the suffering of the damned, St. Thomas' friend Rainaldo de Piperno compiles writes:

 I answer that, A thing may be a matter of rejoicing in two ways. First directly, when one rejoices in a thing as such: and thus the saints will not rejoice in the punishment of the wicked. Secondly, indirectly, by reason namely of something annexed to it: and in this way the saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill them with joy. And thus the Divine justice and their own deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of the blessed: while the punishment of the damned will cause it indirectly.

So, we can properly rejoice that good triumphed over evil and that justice was done, albeit a prayer for the soul of Osama bin Laden would also be in order.

It may be a tough line to define, and to adhere to, but that is the way it seems to break.

N.T. Wright on the Resurrection.

Where was Jesus on Holy Saturday?

The Harrowing of Hell.

Christianity increasing; atheism declining.

George Weigel writes:

For 27 years, the International Bulletin of Missionary Research has published an annual "Status of Global Mission" report, which attempts to quantify the world Christian reality, comparing Christianity's circumstances to those of other faiths, and assaying how Christianity's various expressions are faring when measured against the recent (and not-so-recent) past. The report is unfailingly interesting, sometimes jarring, and occasionally provocative.


The provocation in the 2011 report involves martyrdom. For purposes of research, the report defines "martyrs" as "believers in Christ who have lost their lives, prematurely, in situations of witness, as a result of human hostility." The report estimates that there were, on average, 270 new Christian martyrs every 24 hours over the past decade, such that "the number of martyrs [in the period 2000-2010] was approximately 1 million." Compare this to an estimated 34,000 Christian martyrs in 1900.

As for the interesting, try the aggregate numbers. According to the report, there will be, by mid-2011, 2,306,609,000 Christians of all kinds in the world, representing 33 percent of world population -- a slight percentage rise from mid-2000 (32.7 percent), but a slight percentage drop since 1900 (34.5 percent). Of those 2.3 billion Christians, some 1.5 billion are regular church attenders, who worship in 5,171,000 congregations or "worship centers," up from 400,000 in 1900 and 3.5 million in 2000.

These 2.3 billion Christians can be divided into six "ecclesiastical megablocks": 1,160,880,000 Catholics; 426,450,000 Protestants; 271,316,000 Orthodox; 87,520,000 Anglicans; 378,281,000 "Independents" (i.e., those separated from or unaffiliated with historic denominational Christianity); and 35,539,000 "marginal Christians" (i.e., those professing off-brand Trinitarian theology, dubious Christology, or a supplementary written revelation beyond the Bible).

Compared to the world's 2.3 billion Christians, there are 1.6 billion Muslims, 951 million Hindus, 468 million Buddhists, 458 million Chinese folk-religionists, and 137 million atheists, whose numbers have actually dropped over the past decade, despite the caterwauling of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Co. One cluster of comparative growth statistics is striking: As of mid-2011, there will be an average of 80,000 new Christians per day (of whom 31,000 will be Catholics) and 79,000 new Muslims per day, but 300 fewer atheists every 24 hours.

Is Jesus Christ a Myth?

Historian James Hannam deconstructs the myth that Jesus was a myth.

Hannam is an excellent historian and writer who takes the time to pick apart the pseudo-knowledge that all-too often passes for conventional wisdom.

I recommend Hannam's "God's Philosophers" to anyone interested in the intersection of religion and science.

The Great War on Terror will probably see the final destruction of the Christian communities of the Middle East....

...but...hey!...since they're only Christians, who cares?

Periods of bloc warfare are bad for cultural minorities.  Anti-Semitism in Europe and Muslim Spain really didn't get going until the Crusades, for example.

This story is mindboggling bit of barbarity in a part of the world that is not show about acts of mindboggling barbarity:

In the news reports on Sunday’s massacre by al-Qaeda of 42 Christians at Baghdad’s Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church, one item struck many as incongruous — one of the terrorists’ demands was the release of two women purportedly held prisoner in Egyptian Coptic monasteries. While this has been little-noticed in the West, it is an explosive issue in Egypt, where threats against the Copts, about 10 percent of the population, have increased in a year that began with a massacre of Copts in Nag Hamadi on Christmas Eve.


Part of the background is the increasing abduction and forced conversion of Coptic women. On April 19, 2010, a bipartisan group of 18 members of the U.S. Congress wrote to Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, director of the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Office, about reports documenting that Coptic women and girls are increasingly subject to “fraud, physical and sexual violence, captivity, forced marriage, and exploitation in forced domestic servitude or commercial sexual exploitation, and financial benefit to the individuals who secure the forced conversion.” They urged the TIP Office to investigate whether this should be covered in the 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report.

Christians have been in Egypt and Mesopotamia since the time of Christ.  I wouldn't be surprised if my lifetime doesn't see the last Christians in both countries.

He is Risen!

Sacrificing Religions

"Hindu sacrifice of 250,000 animals begins."

This story puts me in mind of Julian the Apostate - who attempted to undermine Christianity and return the Roman Empire to its traditional Pagan religious traditions.  An essential part of this restoration included a devotion to animal sacrifice, such that Julian the Apostate was also called Julian the Apostate, and he was often described as being covered with the gore of the multitude of animals that he sacrificed to his pagan gods.

The article descrives the festival to the Hindu Goddess Goddhimai as follows:

The world's biggest animal sacrifice began in Nepal today with the killing of the first of more than 250,000 animals as part of a Hindu festival in the village of Bariyapur, near the border with India.


The event, which happens every five years, began with the decapitation of thousands of buffalo, killed in honour of Gadhimai, a Hindu goddess of power.

With up to a million worshippers on the roads near the festival grounds, this year's fair seems more popular than ever, despite vocal protests from animals rights groups who have called for it to be banned. "It is the traditional way, " explained 45-year old Manoj Shah, a Nepali driver who has been attending the event since he was six, "If we want anything, and we come here with an offering to the goddess, within five years all our dreams will be fulfilled." .

Crowds thronged the roads and camped out in the open, wrapped in blankets against the cool mist. The festivities included a ferris wheel, fortune-telling robots and stalls broadcasting music and offering tea and sugary snacks.

As dawn broke, the fair officially opened with the sacrifice of two rats, two pigeons, a pig, a lamb and a rooster in the main temple, to cheers of "Long live Gadhimai" from spectators pushing against each other for a better view.

In the main event, 250 appointed residents with traditional kukri knives began their task of decapitating more than 10,000 buffalo in a dusty enclosure guarded by high walls and armed police.

Frightened calves galloped around in vain as the men, wearing red bandanas and armbands, pursued them and chopped off their heads. Banned from entering the animal pen, hundreds of visitors scrambled up the three-metre walls to catch a glimpse of the carnage.

The dead beasts will be sold to companies who will profit from the sale of the meat, bones and hide. Organisers will funnel the proceeds into development of the area, including the temple upkeep.

On the eve of the event, protesters made a final plea to organisers by cracking open coconuts in a nearby temple as a symbolic sacrifice. "It is cruel and inhumane. We've always been a superstitious country, but I don't think sacrifice has to be part of the Hindu religion," said the protest organiser, Pramada Shah

The campaign has the support of the French actor Brigitte Bardot, who has petitioned the Nepalese prime minister, Madhav Kumar Nepal, about the issue. But the government, which donated £36,500 to the event, has shown no sign of discontinuing the centuries-old tradition. An attempt by the previous government to cut the budget for animal sacrifice provoked street protests.


Chandan Dev Chaudhary, a Hindu priest, said he was pleased with the festival's high turnout and insisted tradition had to be kept. "The goddess needs blood," he said. "Then that person can make his wishes come true."

I find this interesting as a practical example of the world from which Christianity emerged.