The link below is to an article that reports on the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia having to add additional colours to the temperature map graphic of Australia for the extreme temperatures currently being experienced in Australia.
For more visit:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/temperatures-off-the-charts-as-australia-turns-deep-purple-20130108-2ce33.html
Middle East journalist Mary Abdelmassih has reported that on the occasion of Egyptian President Mubarak’s visit to Washington this week to attend the Mideast talks, Coptic Christians in the US and Canada staged a peaceful rally on September 2nd outside the White House to protest the persecution of Copts in Egypt, reports Dan Wooding, founder of ASSIST Ministries.
The Motto of the rally was: “President Mubarak Make Peace in Your Country First.”
In her story for the Assyrian International News Agency (www.aina.org), Abdelmassih said that according to a press release by the rally organizer Coptic Solidarity, based in North America, the Egyptian regime, represented by Mubarak, is a key partner in the persecution of the Copts. President Mubarak comes Washington to market his regime and his family’s through the Palestinian issue, and we must tell him “stop persecuting the Copts…make peace in your country first.”
“Mubarak brought back Coptic persecution to the level experienced under the Mameluke era (1250-1517) in Egypt,” says Coptic Solidarity. “Under the rule of President Mubarak, more than 1,500 of assault on Copts have occurred, without any appropriate punishment given to criminals or compensation to the victims.”
“We want the whole world to know the oppression, violence and attacks on churches and property of the Copts under Mubarak’s rule,” said one rally participant. “They are targeting the Coptic family.”
US-based Coptic activist Magdy Khalil told Coptic Hope-Sat in an interview that Mubarak gets his importance from being a peace broker, and he is coming to Washington to make a deal for his son’s Gamal “inheritance” of the Presidency of Egypt. “He needs to get the green light from USA and Israel on one side and the Muslim brotherhood inside Egypt on the other.” He added that Copts are not important for the regime to take into account.
Commenting on the White House rally, Magdy Khalil told the Egyptian daily Al Dostor that the intensive media presence for the Mideast talks “helped us to deliver a message to the whole world that Christians of Egypt have a problem. While the Palestinian issue is that of territorial dispute, the Copts are suffering from persecution.”
Report from the Christian Telegraph
With deadline for new constitution approaching, Christians fear end of secular government.
KATHMANDU, Nepal, March 30 (CDN) — Four years after Nepal became officially secular, fear is growing that the country could revert to the Hindu state it was till 2006, when proclaiming Christ was a punishable offense and many churches functioned clandestinely to avoid being shut down.
Concerns were heightened after Nepal’s deposed King Gyanendra Shah, once regarded as a Hindu god, broke the silence he has observed since Nepal abolished monarchy in 2008. During his visit to a Hindu festival this month, the former king said that monarchy was not dead and could make a comeback if people so desired.
Soon after that, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, a former prime minister and respected leader of the largest ruling party, said that instead of getting a new constitution, Nepal should revive an earlier one. The 1990 constitution declared Nepal a Hindu kingdom with a constitutional monarch.
There is now growing doubt that the ruling parties will not be able to fashion the new constitution they promised by May.
“We feel betrayed,” said Dr. K.B. Rokaya, general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Nepal. “The Constituent Assembly we elected to give us a new constitution that would strengthen democracy and secularism has frittered away the time and opportunity given to it.”
The clamor for a Hindu state has been growing as the May 28 deadline for the new constitution draws near. When a Hindu preacher, Kalidas Dahal, held a nine-day prayer ritual in Kathmandu this month seeking reinstatement of Hinduism as the state religion, thousands of people flocked to him. The throng included three former prime ministers and top leaders of the ruling parties.
“The large turnout signals that Hinduism is enshrined in the hearts of the people and can’t be abolished by the government,” said Hridayesh Tripathi, a former minister and Constituent Assembly member whose Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party is the fifth-largest in the ruling alliance. “It was a mistake to abolish Hinduism in a hurry.”
Another blow for a Hindu state was struck by the Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal (RPP-N), the only party that fought the 2008 election in support of monarchy and a Hindu state. It is now calling for a referendum. As a pressure tactic, it paralyzed the capital and its two neighboring cities in February by calling a general strike.
“The election gave the Constituent Assembly the mandate of writing a new constitution, not deciding issues of national importance,” said Kamal Thapa, the RPP-N chief who also was home minister during the brief government headed by Gyanendra. “Most people in Nepal want a Hindu state and a constitutional king. If their demand is not heeded, they will feel excluded and refuse to follow the new constitution. We are asking the government to hold a referendum on the two issues before May 28.”
With only two months left, it is clear the demand can’t be met if the constitution is to come into effect within the stipulated time. Now the specter of anarchy and violence hangs over Nepal.
Nepal’s Maoists, who fought a 10-year war to make Nepal a secular republic and who remain the former king’s most bitter enemy, say attempts have begun to whip up riots in the name of a Hindu state. The former guerrillas also allege that the campaign for the restoration of Hinduism as the state religion is backed by ministers, politicians from the ruling parties and militant religious groups from India.
Effectively Hindu
Even if a new, secular constitution is approved by the deadline, there is still no guarantee that the rights of religious minorities would be protected.
Nilambar Acharya, who heads the committee that is drafting the new constitution, said it would be merely a broad guideline for the government; compatible laws would have to be drafted to protect rights.
“The previous constitution abolished ‘untouchability’ [a practice among Hindus of treating those at the bottom of the social ladder as outcasts],” Acharya told Compass. “But untouchability still exists in Nepal. To achieve all that the constitution promises, the mindset of society has to be changed first. For that, you need political will.”
Though Nepal became secular in 2006, Hinduism still gets preferential treatment. The state allocates funds for institutions like the Kumari, the tradition of choosing prepubescent girls as protective deities of the state and worshipping them as “living goddesses.” The state also gave money to organizers of a controversial, five-yearly religious festival, the Gadhimai Fair, where tens of thousands of birds are slaughtered as offerings to Hindu gods despite international condemnation.
There is no support, predictably, for Christian festivals. When the Constituent Assembly was formed – partly though election and partly by nomination – no Christian name was proposed even though the prime minister was authorized to nominate members from unrepresented communities.
Christian leaders want such religious bias abolished. Rokaya of the National Council of Churches of Nepal said Christians have recommended full freedom of religion in the new constitution: allowing one to follow the religion of one’s choice, to change one’s religion if desired or have the right not to be associated with any religion.
The churches have also asked the state not to interfere in religious matters.
“We are asking the government not to fund any religious activity, not to be part of any religious appointments and not to allow public land for any religious event,” Rokaya said.
The recommendations, however, may not be heeded. During their brief stint in power, the Maoists tried to stop state assistance for the Kumari. It led to violence and a general strike in the capital, forcing the party to withdraw the decision.
In its 2009 report on religious freedom in Nepal, the U.S. Department of State notes that while the interim constitution officially declared the country secular, “the president, in his capacity as head of state, attended major Hindu religious ceremonies over which the king previously presided.”
It also notes that there were reports of societal abuses and discrimination based on religious affiliation, belief, or practice.
“Those who converted to a different religious group occasionally faced violence and were ostracized socially,” it states. “Those who chose to convert to other religious groups, in particular Hindu citizens who converted to Islam or Christianity, were sometimes ostracized. They occasionally faced isolated incidents of hostility or discrimination from Hindu extremist groups. Some reportedly were forced to leave their villages.”
Dr. Ramesh Khatri, executive director of Association for Theological Education in Nepal, has experienced such persecution first-hand. When he became a Christian in 1972, his father disowned him. Then in 1984 he was arrested for holding a Bible camp. Though the case against him was dropped in 1990 after a pro-democracy movement, Khatri said hatred of Christians still persists.
“Christians can never sleep peacefully at night,” he said wryly. “The new constitution will make Nepal another India, where Christians are persecuted in Orissa, Gujarat and Karnataka.” The Oxford University-educated Khatri, who writes a column in a Nepali daily, said violent responses to his articles show how Nepal still regards its Christians.
“I am attacked as a ‘Rice Christian,’” he said. “It is a derogatory term implying I converted for material benefits. The antagonistic feeling society has towards Christians will not subside with the new constitution, and we can’t expect an easy life. The Bible says that, and the Bible is true.”
Christians continue to face persecution and harassment. In March, missions resource organization Timeless Impact International (TII) noted that a church in northern Nepal, near the foothills of Mt. Everest, was attacked by a local mob.
The newly established church in Dolakha district was attacked during a fellowship meeting in January. An ethnic mob headed by religious leaders destroyed the church meeting place, assaulted participants and warned them not to speak about Christianity in the village, TII said.
The situation, even now, remained unchanged.
“None of the church members have been able to return to their homes,” TII stated. “They feel completely unsafe and at risk.”
Report from Compass Direct News
Court ignores ‘religious hostility’ of Turk who held knife to Christian’s throat.
ISTANBUL, February 12 (CDN) — An Istanbul court has ordered the release of a jailed Turk who publicly threatened and held a knife to the throat of a Christian he attacked six months ago.
In a ruling on Wednesday (Feb. 10), the Kadikoy Seventh Court of First Instance convicted Yasin Karasu, 24, of making death threats and mounting an armed attack against Ismail Aydin. Shouting to attract passersby as he held a knife to Aydin’s throat on Aug. 3, Karasu had denounced the Christian as a “missionary dog” who had betrayed Turkey by leaving Islam and evangelizing others.
The crime is punishable by four years in prison, but Justice Tahsin Dogan ruled that Karasu should be released unconditionally, without serving the remainder of his sentence.
After the attack last August, the 48-year-old Aydin had declined to press charges against his assailant, who was taken into police custody at the scene. But state prosecutors charged Karasu under criminal statutes for making armed threats, obstructing another’s freedom, and attempted harm with a weapon.
He was then sent to prison for the duration of criminal investigations into the case.
After an initial hearing on Jan. 12, Karasu appeared in Istanbul’s Kadikoy district courthouse this week for a second trial hearing. Arriving in handcuffs from Istanbul’s Metris Prison where he has been incarcerated for the past six months, Karasu erupted in several emotional outbursts as he entered the courthouse with an escort of gendarmerie guards.
At the outset, the prisoner heatedly refused to accept the lawyer his father hired to represent him in court. After a guard removed his handcuffs before he entered the courtroom, Karasu took out of his pocket several handwritten pages, which he said he would submit in his own defense.
Under Turkish law, Karasu’s conviction should have left him with a four-year jail term for his death threats and armed attack on Aydin. But the prosecutor, applying a frequently used law of procedures, cited the defendant’s “respectful behavior, condition and manners in the courtroom in his favor” and declared that Karasu’s good conduct had earned him a one-sixth reduction (eight months) in his sentence.
Together with the six months Karasu has already been jailed, that reduced his four-year prison term to a remaining two years and 10 months.
Nevertheless, the court ruled for Karasu’s unconditional release. The Court of Appeal must approve this sentence, however, and his actual release then must be formally approved in writing by the Administrative Board of Penalties.
“It seems that the judge did not take into account at all that this crime was committed with religious hostility,” one member of the legal committee of Turkey’s Association of Protestant Churches told Compass. “That, in my view, should have aggravated the crime and sentence.”
Human rights lawyer Orhan Kemal Cengiz, after reviewing Wednesday’s court record, agreed.
“This is also a crime against the freedom of religion,” Cengiz said. “This should be another factor to be taken into account, and the sentence should be increased accordingly.”
Karasu had taken Aydin hostage by grabbing him around the neck, holding a knife blade to his throat and forcing him along the street to a busy intersection in Istanbul’s Kadikoy district. Within minutes both TV crews and police arrived at the scene, watching as Karasu wrapped Aydin’s head in a large Turkish flag and continued to taunt him as a traitor to the nation.
“I want to see him set free,” Aydin commented outside the courtroom before this week’s hearing. Aydin, who converted to Christianity 22 years ago, said he had forgiven Karasu.
Aydin said Karasu had made contact with him several times during the year previous to his attack, asking him questions about the Christian faith. He said Karasu, who was unemployed when he attacked him, had experienced emotional problems and depression while completing the last months of his military service.
Karasu’s father, who traveled from Erzurum to attend this week’s hearing, told Compass that he could not understand what had caused his son to launch such an attack against Aydin. Confirming that his son had received psychological treatment in the past, he declared his intention to take him back to Erzurum after his release, so that he could live at home and undergo more psychological therapy.
Report from Compass Direct News
Neighborhood residents protest new church building in Kabylie region.
ISTANBUL, December 31 (CDN) — Nearly 50 Muslim members of a community in northern Algeria blocked Christians from holding a Christmas service on Saturday (Dec. 26) to protest a new church building in their neighborhood.
As Algerian Christian converts gathered for their weekly meeting and Christmas celebration that morning, they were confronted by protestors barring the doors of their church building. Tafat Church is located in Tizi-Ouzou, a city 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of the Algerian capital, Algiers. Established five years ago, the church belongs to the Protestant Church of Algeria (EPA). Until recently it met in a small rented building. In November it opened its doors in a new location to accommodate the growing needs of its nearly 350 congregants.
The local residents protesting were reportedly irritated at finding that a church building with many visitors from outside the area had opened near their houses, according to an El Watan report on Sunday (Dec. 27). The daily newspaper highlighted that the residents feared their youth would be lured to the church with promises of money or cell phones.
“This land is the land of Islam! Go pray somewhere else,” some of the protestors said, according to El Watan. Protestors also reportedly threatened to kill the church pastor.
The protestors stayed outside the church until Monday (Dec. 28), and that evening some of them broke into the new building and stole the church microphones and speakers, according to the pastor, Mustafa Krireche. As of yesterday (Dec. 30) the church building’s electricity was cut.
One of Algeria’s Christian leaders, Youssef Ourahmane, said he could not recall another display of such outrage from Algerians against Christians.
“It was shocking, and it was the first time to my knowledge that this happened,” said Ourahmane. “And there weren’t just a few people, but 50. That’s quite a big number … the thing that happened on Saturday was a little unusual for Algeria and for the believers as well.”
A few weeks before the Saturday incident, local residents signed a petition saying they did not want the church to operate near their homes and wanted it to be closed. Local authorities presented it to the church, but Ourahmane said the fellowship, which is legally authorized to exist under the EPA, does not plan to respond to it.
On Saturday church leaders called police, who arrived at the scene and told the Christians to go away so they could talk to the protestors, whom they did not evacuate from the premises, according to local news website Kabyles.net. The story Kabyles.net published on Sunday was entitled, “Islamic tolerance in action at Tizi-Ouzou.”
“In that area where the church is located, I’m sure the people have noticed something happening,” said Ourahmane. “Having hundreds of Christians coming to meet and different activities in the week, this is very difficult for Muslims to see happening there next door, and especially having all these Muslim converts. This is the problem.”
A local Muslim from the neighborhood explained that residents had protested construction of the church building in a residential area, according to El Watan.
“What’s happening over there is a shame and an offense to Muslims,” he told El Watan. “We found an old woman kissing a cross … they could offer money or mobile phones to students to win their sympathies and sign them up. We won’t let them exercise their faith even if they have authorization. There’s a mosque for those who want to pray to God. This is the land of Islam.”
Behind the Scenes
Ourahmane said he believes that Islamists, and maybe even the government, were behind the protests.
“Maybe this is a new tactic they are trying to use to prevent churches from meeting,” he said. “Instead of coming by force and closing the church, the local police use the Muslim fundamentalists. That’s my analysis, anyhow.”
In February 2008 the government applied measures to better control non-Muslim groups through Ordinance 06-03. Authorities ordered the closure of 26 churches in the Kabylie region, both buildings and house churches, maintaining that they were not registered under the ordinance.
Despite efforts to comply with the ordinance, many Christian groups indicated they were blocked by lack of information, bureaucratic processes or resistance to their applications, according to this year’s International Religious Freedom Report by the U.S. Department of State. None of the churches have closed since then, but their status continues to remain questionable and only valid through registration with the EPA.
“If we have the right to exercise our faith, let them tell us so,” Pastor Krireche told El Watan. “If the authorities want to dissolve our association through legal means, let them do so.”
Recent growth of the church in Algeria is difficult for Muslims to accept, according to Ourahmane, despite public discourse among the nation’s intellectuals advocating for religious freedoms. Unofficial estimates of Christians and Jews combined range from 12,000 to 40,000, according to the state department report. Local leaders believe the number of Algerian Christians could be as many as 65,000.
Increasing numbers of people who come from Islam are like a stab for the Muslim community, said Ourahmane.
“It’s hard for them to accept that hundreds of Christians gather to worship every week,” he said. “It’s not easy. There are no words to explain it. It’s like a knife and you see someone bleeding … They see the church as a danger to Algerian culture.”
The Algerian government has the responsibility to face up to the changing face of its country and to grant Christians the freedom to meet and worship, said Ourahmane.
“The local authorities and especially the Algerian government need to be challenged in this all the time,” he said. “They have to be challenged: ‘Don’t you recognize the situation here?’ I mean we’re talking of tens of thousands of believers, not just a few.”
There are around 64 churches in the Kabylie region, where most Algerian Christians live, as well as house groups, according to Ourahmane. The Kabylie region is populated by Berbers, an indigenous people of North Africa.
“There are lots of healings and deliverance, and people are experiencing new things in their life,” Ourahmane said of the Algerian churches. “They are finding hope in Christ which they have never experienced before.”
There are half a dozen court cases against churches and Christians. None of these have been resolved, frozen in Algeria’s courts.
False Accusations
In ongoing negative media coverage of Christians, last month Algerian newspaper Echorouk published a story claiming that the former president of the EPA, who was deported in 2008, had returned to Algeria to visit churches, give advice and give them financial aid.
The report stated that the former EPA president, Hugh Johnson, was known for his evangelism and warned readers of his evangelizing “strategies.”
Yesterday Johnson told Compass by telephone that the report was pure fabrication, and that he has not set foot in Algeria since he was deported.
Johnson’s lawyers are still trying to appeal his case in Algerian courts.
This year church groups stated that the government denied the visa applications of some religious workers, citing the government ban on proselytizing, according to the state department report.
Report from Compass Direct News
The religious beliefs and practices of Americans do not fit neatly into conventional categories. A new poll by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that large numbers of Americans engage in multiple religious practices, mixing elements of diverse traditions, reports Pew Research Center.
Many say they attend worship services of more than one faith or denomination — even when they are not traveling or going to special events like weddings and funerals. Many also blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs such as reincarnation, astrology and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects. And sizeable minorities of all major U.S. religious groups say they have experienced supernatural phenomena, such as being in touch with the dead or with ghosts.
One-third of Americans (35%) say they regularly (9%) or occasionally (26%) attend religious services at more than one place, and most of these (24% of the public overall) indicate that they sometimes attend religious services of a faith different from their own. Aside from when they are traveling and special events like weddings and funerals, three-in-ten Protestants attend services outside their own denomination, and one-fifth of Catholics say they sometimes attend non-Catholic services.
To read the full report, click here.
Report from the Christian Telegraph
A few months ago, ChinaAid Association learned that the Chinese government had targeted six house churches to be shut down. A week ago, that directive was made evident, reports MNN.
On October 29, 2009, the long-respected Shouwang House Church was denied renewal of its rental contract for office space in Huagie Plaza. It was discovered that the managers had been pressured by both the Public Security Bureau and the Religious Affairs Bureau of Beijing City not to renew the lease.
Since the church no longer had a place to worship, they held their service outside in the snow, joyfully singing to the Lord despite the poor circumstances. Between 800 and 1000 believers showed up for the service. Government officials attempted to stop this meeting, as well, by closing the park in which the service would be held, but the service continued.
This is not the first time the Shouwang House Church has experienced persecution. The church was originally evicted from its location in April and forced to worship outside all summer. Although it may have been not so bad to hold services in the summer weather, the increasingly cold weather is not inviting.
The more troubling issues lie in the fact that the Chinese government is actively shutting down house churches. Christian persecution continues to grow in China; thankfully, so does the church.
Report from the Christian Telegraph
Assemblies of God obtains ‘operating license,’ but quest for recognition continues.
HO CHI MINH CITY, October 23 (CDN) — The Assemblies of God (AoG) in Vietnam on Monday (Oct. 19) received an “operating license,” which the government described as “the first step . . . before becoming officially legal.”
This operating license gives permission for all of the congregations of the Vietnam AoG to “carry on religious activity” anywhere in the country for the next year. During this time the church body must prepare a doctrinal statement, a constitution and bylaws and a four-year working plan to be approved by the government before being allowed to hold an organizing assembly. These steps, AoG leaders hope, would lead to legal recognition.
The operating license is the first one granted since five were granted two years ago. The last of those five churches, the Christian Fellowship Church, was finally allowed to hold its organizing assembly in late September. According to an internal 2008 government Protestant Training Manual obtained by church leaders, this assembly was delayed because authorities observed large discrepancies between the number of followers the group claimed and the actual number, as well as other “instability.”
Vietnam News Service reported on Sept. 29 that the Christian Fellowship Church has “30,000 believers nationwide.”
Should the AoG achieve legal recognition, it would be the ninth among some 70 Protestant groups in Vietnam and the seventh since new religion legislation touted to expedite registration was introduced in 2004.
The AoG quest was typically long, and it is not yet over. Though started in the early 1970s before the communist era, the denomination was deemed dormant by authorities after the communist takeover and restarted in 1989. Strangely, the Vietnamese religion law requires a church organization to have 20 years of stable organization before it can even be considered for legal recognition.
Though the AoG had been trying for years to register, only this year did it fulfill the 20-year requirement in the eyes of the government. Sources said AoG’s resistance to strong pressure by the government to eliminate a middle or district level of administration may also have contributed to the delay.
Ironically, the official government news report credits the Vietnam AoG with 40,000 followers, while denominational General Superintendent Samuel Lam told Compass the number is 25,000. He also said he hoped the advantages of registration would outweigh the disadvantages.
With no more operating licenses being granted, the future of registration is in a kind of limbo. Sources said a lower level of registration in which local authorities are supposed to offer permission for local congregations to carry on religious activities while the more complicated higher levels are worked out has largely failed. Only about 10 percent of the many hundreds of applications have received a favorable reply, they said, leaving most house churches vulnerable to arbitrary harassment or worse.
Leaders of all Protestant groups say that they continue to experience government resistance, as well as social pressure, whenever they preach Christ in new areas. They added that evidence is strong that the government’s aim is to contain Protestant growth.
Hmong Christians who fled the Northwest Mountainous Region for the Central Highlands a decade ago, developing very poor land in places such as Dak Nong, reported to Compass that they were singled out for land confiscation just when their fields became productive. They said ethnic Vietnamese made these land grabs with the complicity of the authorities, sometimes multiple times.
At the same time, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on Oct. 19 that Vietnam has experienced a “sharp backsliding on religious freedom.” Among other incidents, HRW cited the late September crackdown on followers of Buddhist peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh. Some 150 monks were forcibly evicted from his sect’s Bat Nha Monastery in Lam Dong province on Sept. 27, and 200 nuns fled in fear the next day. As in recent land disputes with Roman Catholics involving thousands of demonstrators, authorities hired local and imported thugs to do the deed to present the image that ordinary local people were upset with the religion.
After a visit to Vietnam in May, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended that the United States reinstate Vietnam as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), the blacklist of religious liberty offenders. Vietnam had been on the list from 2004 until 2006.
The USCIRF, which experienced less government cooperation that on some previous visits, observed that “Vietnam’s overall human rights record remains poor, and has deteriorated since Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization in January 2007.”
Some key Protestant leaders describe themselves as weary and frustrated at what they termed the government’s lack of sincerity, extreme tardiness and outright duplicity regarding religious freedom. They too said they believe that the lifting of Vietnam’s CPC status was premature and resulted in the loss of a major incentive for Vietnam to improve religious freedom.
Report from Compass Direct News
The Episcopal Church has to clarify God’s official position on abortion – at least so says a priestess of the church, who claims that a proposed rite for post-abortive women conflicts with church theology and that the Deity “rejoices” when women elect to abort their children, reports Peter J. Smith, LifeSiteNews.com.
Rev. Nina Churchman wrote a letter to Episcopal Life Online expressing her outrage upon learning that her church has developed a healing rite for post-abortion women sorrowful over their abortion that seems to have language alluding to “sin” and “guilt.”
Churchman said she “was sickened to discover that the rite for abortion is couched wholly in terms of sin and transgression.”
The priestess also took particular umbrage with the words, “I seek God’s forgiveness” and the words “God rejoices that you have come seeking God’s merciful forgiveness.”
“The Episcopal Church, by resolution, has long held that women have the freedom to choose an abortion,” asserted Churchman. “It is not considered a sin.”
The Episcopal Church’s “long held” position permitting abortion dates back to 1967, when the church began to lobby for abortion in limited cases (i.e. rape, incest, fetal deformity, health of the mother), which by 1994 had become a full-blown defense of a right to an abortion. The church’s previous position on abortion, had lasted much longer. As late as 1958 the church had expressed an unequivocal defense of over 1900 years of Christian tradition against abortion, stating, “Abortion and infanticide are to be condemned.”
“Women should be able to mourn the loss of an aborted fetus without having to confess anything,” declared Churchman.
“God, unlike what the liturgy states, also rejoices that women facing unplanned pregnancies have the freedom to carefully choose the best option – birth, adoption or abortion – for themselves and their families.”
“The wording of this liturgy focuses solely on guilt and sin instead of the grief and healing that may accompany a very difficult but appropriate decision to terminate a pregnancy,” said Churchman.
Instead Churchman expressed her determination that the church should reject the rite at the next General Convention and do away with the references to “sin” and “guilt.”
The proposed post-abortion healing service had been the idea of Georgette Forney, president of Anglicans for Life, who had obtained an abortion when she was 16. Forney had asked the church to create a healing service for women like herself seeking healing, and the Episcopal General Convention had approved the development of the project.
The result was a rite addressing “the pastoral needs of women and men and who have experienced miscarriage, abortion or other trauma in the childbearing or childbirth process” in a book called, “Rachel’s Tears, Hannah’s Hopes: Liturgies and Prayers for Healing from Loss Related to Childbearing and Childbirth.”
The 2009 General Convention of the Episcopal Church will consider and vote on the rite when it convenes July 8-17 in Anaheim, California.
Report from the Christian Telegraph
NOTE: My Thoughts on the Above Article
The above article surely highlights some serious issues relating to the Episcopal Church in America, from a Biblical perspective.
1. The area of church leadership is of concern, even leaving out the issue of priests, what is a woman doing in the place of leadership within the church. Surely the Scriptures are clear on this.
2. The Episcopal Church in America has landed on the wrong side of the abortion debate. Abortion is a crime against humanity and a sin. I wouldn’t have thought this was a difficult position to reach for Bible believing Christians, but perhaps that is the real essence of the problem – perhaps these are not Bible believing Christians?
Assemblies of God World Missions has evacuated its missionaries from troubled Madagascar, an island nation in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa, reports Dan Wooding, founder of ASSIST Ministries.
Following months of threats and infighting for political position, Madagascar experienced a coup on March 17, as President Marc Ravalomanana apparently chose to step down.
“The military is divided as to who they are going to support,” explains Africa Regional Director Mike McClaflin. “The American Embassy very strongly urged American citizens to evacuate the island . . . and now the American Embassy has evacuated its staff.”
McClaflin says that Assemblies of God World Missions (AGWM) leadership made the decision on March 14, at the recommendation of the U.S State Department, to take AG missionaries in Madagascar out of harm’s way and moved them to Nairobi, Kenya, for the time being.
“With missionaries now in 212 countries and territories of the world, almost no civil uprising, conflict or disaster takes place in the world that does not touch the lives of some of our missionaries,” states AGWM Communications Director Randy Hurst. “The unrest and government takeover in Madagascar affects four missionary families and well as one single missionary.”
Included in the list of missionaries evacuated are the families of Nate and Tammy Lashway, Jay and Carey Rostorfer, and Aaron and Heather Santmyire, Zach and Shellie Maddox, missionaries from East Africa who were visiting the Santmyires, along with short-term MAPS worker Ashley Masten, were also evacuated. The Manny Prabhudas family, who also serve in Madagascar, are currently in the United States on their itineration cycle.
Hurst adds that “Madagascar is an example of how so many of the crises in our world today demand that we as a church must commit ourselves increasingly to intercessory prayer for our missionaries and fellow believers around the world.”
Report from the Christian Telegraph
Random Thoughts 
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