Religion | Ain't Complicated

What’s With Rick Warren?

From the current Lighthouse Trails Newsletter:

You’ve heard me say many times that the greatest thing you can do with your life is tell somebody about Jesus … if you help somebody secure their eternal destiny, that they spend the rest of their life in Heaven not Hell …your life counts, your life matters because nothing matters more than helping get a person and their eternal destiny settled. They will be forever eternally grateful….And I’ve always said that that was the greatest thing you can do with your life. I was wrong. There is one thing you can do greater than share Jesus Christ with somebody, and it is help start a church.” -Sermon from 11/2003 when Rick Warren Announced His Global Peace Plan to Saddleback.

In an interview in August 2006 with Charlie Rose, Warren stated that we don’t have to have the same religion or moral beliefs to work with people on poverty, disease, etc. As an example he said he just met with the President of the gay-activist group ACT UP, and asked him, “Eric [Sawyer], how can I help you get your message out?” Sawyer answered, “Use your moral authority.” Warren then said to Rose, “I’m working with these guys … I’m looking for a coalition of civility, which means let’s get back to the original meaning of tolerance.”

Do you agree with Mr. Warren?

Unique Adversaries

After the flirtation came the fatwa:

With some overly friendly comments to Gov. Sarah Palin at the United Nations, Asif Ali Zardari has succeeded in uniting one of Pakistan’s hard-line mosques and its feminists after a few weeks in office.

A radical Muslim prayer leader said the president shamed the nation for “indecent gestures, filthy remarks, and repeated praise of a non-Muslim lady wearing a short skirt.”

Feminists charged that once again a male Pakistani leader has embarrassed the country with sexist remarks. And across the board, the Pakistani press has shown disapproval.

Muslims and feminists and the press — I wonder how often that axis teams up!

Oh, what did he say to her?

“The whole of America is crazy” — actually, he said more. 🙄

Orissa

First, from the Indian Catholic:

The death toll in the continuing anti-Christian violence in Orissa state rose to 50 as India celebrated the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, father of the nation and champion of peace.
The latest victim, Lalgi Nayak, a Protestant, succumbed to a gash on his neck and other injuries on Oct. 1. He was injured on Sept. 30, when Hindu extremists attacked his Rudangia village, UCA News reported.

Bibhu Datta Das, a legal consultant for the Church of North India, told UCA News on Oct. 2 that Nayak and others were attacked because they “heroically” resisted demands by Hindu fanatics to denounce their Christian faith.

“Such murders are rampant” in Orissa, said the lawyer representing the unified Protestant Church. He added that perpetrators of the violence that began on Aug. 24 not only burn down houses and churches but “demand that Christians accept Hinduism or face death.”

Sindh Today reports:

The Manmohan Singh government has committed to buy energy worth $70 billion from the ‘dying US nuclear industry’ under the nuclear deal, Communist Party of India-Marxist CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat said here Thursday.

[…]

Karat condemned the continuing violence against Chrisitians in Orissa and serial bomb blasts in Tripura late Wednesday.

‘The Orissa government has failed to control the violence. It is shocking. The Naveen Patnaik government and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders should be held responsible for it,’ he said.

World Sikh News has this:

There was little that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could do to persuade the French President Nicholas Sarkozy on the issue of Sikh turbans as he was under fire with the European Union ticking him off for New Delhi’s failure to prevent massacre of Christians in Orissa and Karnataka. At the India-EU summit, Sarkozy, as head of the European Council, and Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, took up the issue very strongly about Hindutva terror outfit’s attacks on Christians, leaving Manmohan Singh with little room to push the Sikh demand for removing the ban on turbans in French schools.

Recruiting Defiant Pastors

Late last night, I noticed WorldMagBlog was calling attention to this event:

Pulpit politics: Pastors to defy IRS

During sermons this Sunday, some 35 pastors across the country will tell their congregations which presidential candidate they should vote for, “according to the Scriptures.”

Their endorsements represent a direct challenge to federal tax law, which prohibits tax-exempt organizations from engaging in partisan political activity.

The clergy have embraced that risk, hoping their actions will trigger an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service, which would then enable a Christian legal advocacy group to take the IRS to court and challenge the constitutionality of the ban.

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a conservative legal group based in Arizona, recruited the pastors for “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” to press their claim that the IRS tax code violates the free speech of religious leaders.

These pastors really were “recruited” for this purpose?

If that is the case, it seems the pastors are being moved by the wrong spirit, no? It certainly appears to me that whatever they “preach” would have more political and civic motivation than it would Spirit motivation.

Or am I missing something here?

(For a little more perspective on this: Church and State.)

At Work: For the People

Here’s “proof” that some CongressFolks are still doing stuff:

Brand new push in Congress to prevent Shariah invasion

Congressman Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., introduced a bill to the House of Representatives that seeks to prevent Islam’s radical Shariah law from gaining a foothold in the U.S. legal system, as it has in other countries.

Tancredo introduced HR 6975, the Jihad Prevention Act, last week. If made into law, the bill would allow American authorities to prevent advocates of Shariah law from entering the country, revoke the visa of any foreigners that did champion Shariah law and revoke naturalization for citizens that seek to implement Shariah law in the U.S.

The radical form of Islam’s Shariah religious law includes several statutes often objectionable to Western minds, including stoning for adulterous women, amputation for thieves and the death sentence for converting from Islam.

That one has no chance of becoming law.

And the chances for this one are somewhat better, though not by much:

Another Bright Idea

An act sponsored by 25 representatives asking the government to reconsider its ban on incandescent light bulbs has been stalled in committee – and the leading sponsor is faulting Democratic leadership.

The Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act highlights growing concerns over the safety and environmental impact of compact fluorescent bulbs, or CFLs. Before the sale of incandescent bulbs is banned, the representatives are asking the comptroller general to prove replacement with CFLs will be cost-effective, reduce overall carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent in the United States by 2025 and that the bulbs will not pose a health risk to the general public.

[…]

As WND reported, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 was signed into law in December, phasing out the use of traditional, incandescent light bulbs in favor of CFLs beginning in 2012 and culminating in a ban on incandescent bulbs in 2014.

Concerns about mercury in the bulbs and mercury vapor released when a CFL is broken led Bachmann and a group of legislators in the House to second-guess the government’s choice.

Catch Mahmood!

Somehow, that seems like a good title for this:

As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans to speak in the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week, a major international evangelical Christian group based in Jerusalem plans to send a petition to the U.N. Secretary-General calling for the arrest and indictment of Iran’s president on charges of incitement to genocide against Israel. The petition from the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (I.C.E.J.) has gathered signatures from tens of thousands of Christians around the world, as the group joins the chorus of prominent voices from many countries demanding that Iran’s president be brought to justice.

“We feel a profound and telling moral duty to speak out against the growing Iranian nuclear threat to Israel,” said David Parsons, media director for the I.C.E.J.

“The silence of most Christian clergy in the face of Germany’s horrific bid to annihilate European Jewry left a deep stain on the churches,” said the I.C.E.J.’s executive director, Rev. Malcom Hedding. “Yet from it has arisen a sense among multitudes of Christians today that we have an inescapable moral duty to earnestly speak out whenever another genocidal campaign threatens the Jewish people.

Have you signed the petition? I haven’t.

To my credit, though, I say (as a Mennonite), “Leave me out of it!” to this next piece as well:

The I.C.E.J.’s Hedding also slammed the leaders of certain Christian groups, among them the Mennonites and the Quakers, who plan to further honor Ahmadinejad by hosting him at a special reception during his visit to the U.S., in which the Christian leaders hope to engage in a “dialogue” with the threatening leader.

To read the entire article: Christian Group: Indict Ahmadinejad for Threatening a Holocaust

UK’s first official sharia courts

Of camels and noses?

UK’s first official sharia courts

Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.

HT: Dunker Journal