Morality, Religion & Philosophy: June 2005 Archives

I had a few Muslim fellows commenting hundreds of times on this old Shia vs. Sunni post, but I'm having to close the conversation because the number of comments is overloading the server. Perhaps if they want to continue the conversation they can do so here; if anyone else has questions for them about the difference between Shia and Sunni history or beliefs, go for it, they seem pretty knowledgable.

Sweet. Apparently recently-arriving evangelical Christians are causing a stir in Iraq, even among other Christians.

BAGHDAD -- With arms outstretched, the congregation at National Evangelical Baptist Church belted out a praise hymn backed up by drums, electric guitar and keyboard. In the corner, slide images of Jesus filled a large screen. A simple white cross of wood adorned the stage, and worshipers sprinkled the pastor's Bible-based sermon with approving shouts of "Ameen!"

National is Iraq's first Baptist congregation and one of at least seven new Christian evangelical churches established in Baghdad in the past two years. Its Sunday afternoon service, in a building behind a house on a quiet street, draws a couple of hundred worshipers who like the lively music and focus on the Bible.

"I'm thirsty for this kind of church," Suhaila Tawfik, a veterinarian who was raised Catholic, said at a recent service. "I want to go deep in understanding the Bible."

Sounds great to me! But some more "traditional" -- in the Iraqi sense -- Christians don't seem happy.

Some Iraqi Christians expressed fear that the evangelicals would undermine Christian-Muslim harmony here, which rests on a long-standing, tacit agreement not to proselytize each other. "There is an informal agreement that says we have nothing to do with your religion and faith," said Yonadam Kanna, one of six Christians elected to Iraq's parliament. "We are brothers but we don't interfere in your religion."

[Patriarch Emmanuel] Delly [head of the Eastern rite Chaldean Catholic Church, Iraq's largest Christian community] said that "even if a Muslim comes to me and said, 'I want to be Christian,' I would not accept. I would tell him to go back and try to be a good Muslim and God will accept you." Trying to convert Muslims to Christianity, he added, "is not acceptable."

If you don't like it, take it up with God.

And it looks like Christianity is thriving elsewhere in the Middle East as well.

Iraq's new churches are part of Christian evangelicalism's growing presence in several Middle Eastern countries, experts say. In neighboring Jordan, for example, "the indigenous evangelical presence is growing and thriving," said Todd M. Johnson, a scholar of global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.

Nabeeh Abbassi, president of the Jordan Baptist Convention, said in an interview in Amman that there are about 10,000 evangelicals worshiping at 50 churches in Jordan. They include 20 Baptist churches with a combined regular Sunday attendance of 5,000, he added. The organization also operates the Baptist School of Amman, where 40 percent of the student body is Muslim.

While most evangelicals in Jordan come from traditional Christian denominations, Abbassi said, "we're seeing more and more Muslim conversions, not less than 500 a year" over the past 10 years.

It's a start. Let me echo Jesus' own exhortation on evangelism:

Matthew 9:36-38

When he [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."

I was just playing around with BlogExplosion -- a sort of traffic pyramid scheme -- and many of the random sites I found through it are pretty interesting. One that quickly caught my eye was Thoughts of a High Functioning Autistic Teen, the author of which not only doesn't view her condition as a disability but actually says that autism has positive traits. An interesting inside perspective, and especially thought-provoking in an age in which so many people are eager to view themselves as victims.

My church's youth pastor, Josh Ritchie, has been blogging up a storm at Deception in the Church, with a heavy focus on hermeneutics -- that is, "The theory and methodology of interpretation, especially of scriptural text." His recent post on "Miracle Mayhem" is particularly enlightening, as is an earlier post about false gospel presentations. Great stuff, and I'm adding him to the blogroll on the right.

Drudge links to a sickening story about child sacrifices in London, which the reporter insanely links to Christianity.

Boys from Africa are being murdered as human sacrifices in London churches.

They are brought into the capital to be offered up in rituals by fundamentalist Christian sects, according to a shocking report by Scotland Yard.

Followers believe that powerful spells require the deaths of "unblemished" male children.

The murderers may call themselves "Christians", but from the description of the "spells" and witchcraft associated with these -- utterly unbiblical -- murders/"sacrifices" it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that the responsible religious influence is African, not Christian.

The report was put together by an expert social worker and lawyer for the Met after talking to hundreds of people in African communities in a series of workshops. It uncovered allegations of witchcraft spells, child trafficking and HIV-positive people who believe that by having sex with a child they will be "cleansed".

An extract reads: "People who are desperate will seek out experts to cast spells for them.

"Members of the workshop stated that for a spell to be powerful it required a sacrifice involving a male child unblemished by circumcision. They allege that boy children are being trafficked into the UK for this purpose."

Those kinds of belief are not Christian in any sense, and their practitioners are wrong to use that term to describe themselves. They may be wrong out of ignorance or malice, but they're certainly wrong objectively and unquestionably.

Further, though I'm no expert, the numbers in the report seem a little off.

Last month Scotland Yard revealed it had traced just two out of 300 black boys aged four to seven reported missing from London schools in a three-month period.

The true figure for missing boys and girls is feared to be several thousand a year.

The population of London is around 7.5 million; assuming that around 20% of the population is between the ages 0 and 14, that's 1.5 million. I don't know what percentage are West African, but based on the CIA World Factbook it must be less than 5%; 5% of 1.5 million is 75,000. I find it hard to believe that "several thousand" children out of 75,000 can go missing each year and only recently be noticed.

Eugene Volokh has an excellent post up about how science can help us answer questions, but only morality can tell us which questions to ask.

What rule we should use for deciding when someone should have the legal right not to be killed is not a scientific question. Applying the rule may be a scientific question; if we decide that only entities that have consciousness have the right not to be killed, then science can tell us whether John Smith has consciousness. But deciding on the rule is simply not a scientific issue: It's a matter of moral judgment, which science isn't equipped to provide. Science can't tell us whether the legal right not to be killed vests at conception, at viability, at consciousness, or at birth; nor can it tell us when the right dissipates.

Quite right. Additionally, as science has advanced and given us more insight into the workings of the womb, more people are beginning to realize exactly what abortion entails -- and they're rejecting it on moral grounds.

This topic may relate only peripherally to Howard Dean's spirituality, but I think it reveals a lot about his character. Apparently the good Doctor Governor Chairman is using his name to hawk Visa credit cards that donate their 1% rebate to the DNC.

Howard Dean wrote a personal letter to my girlfriend this week. It started, "Dear Heather..." and ended "Governor Howard Dean, M.D., Chariman, DNC" He even included a post script reminder that said, "Don't forget to check the box below to donate your 1% rebate to help the Democratic National Committee."

Now, I use credit cards, and I'm in favor of free enterprise, but it cannot be denied that easy, misused credit is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for poor Americans, and that credit cards make most of their money from people who make purchases with money they don't have. I hardly think it's in the best interests of most Democrats to get yet another credit card. Although I certainly think credit cards should exist, they need to be used responsibly, and I'm uncomfortable with the idea of pushing them on people. The Bible teaches about usury, and credit card companies have possibly one of the least moral legal business plans I can think of.

Update:
It's too bad that, despite his tactics, Howard Dean isn't raising much money.