Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is in Tarpon Springs, Florida for the feast day of Epiphany this week. I was up there yesterday for a welcoming Doxology at St. Nicholas Cathedral, the church in Tarpon. He will lead liturgy tomorrow, throw the cross into Spring Bayou during the blessing of the waters, and make the usuals rounds of meetings, banquets, etc. that accompany these visits.
Some of the events will be televised: Patriachal visit.
The Rev. Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo is the international director of the Barnabas Fund based in England. The Fund is a ministry which assists Christian minorities in the Islamic world and in other areas where Christians undergo persecution. Dr. Sookhdeo was recently in the United States where he spoke with David W. Virtue of VirtueOnline. Dr. Sookhdeo is a leading world authority on Islam, author of several books on Islam including “Understanding Islamic Terrorism” and “A Christian’s Pocket Guide to Islam”. Born in Pakistan of Islamic parentage he converted to Christianity while a student in London in the early 60s.
VirtueOnline: What does the Barnabas Fund (BF) do?
Sookhdeo: It calls attention to the plight of Christian minorities particularly within the Islamic world. It looks at the persecution they are experiencing and seeks to make this known to the wider world. It calls upon the church to pray for, to identify with, and to be advocate for and support practically their suffering brothers and sisters.
VirtueOnline: I gather you are the leading organization in the world involved in this kind of work, and that you inform a number of worldwide government institutions of the difficulties and challenges which Islam poses.
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VirtueOnline: The Archbishop of Canterbury seems to hold the view that Islam can coexist peacefully with Christianity.
Sookhdeo: I would suggest that he listen to the voices of Christians within the Muslim world and in particular the voices coming from southern Sudan, Northern Nigeria, Pakistan and other countries. In these situations Christians experience discrimination, outright persecution and increasingly violence, being directed against them. If Islam is going to be a religion of peace and to coexist alongside Christianity then it must relinquish its theology of violence based on the revelations in the Koran. It must change its Shari’a Law and allow for full equality of Christians. It must allow Muslims the freedom to choose that is, to reject Islam if they so choose or embrace another religion if they so desire. It must give full freedom to women. Unless it can do these things how can there be co-existence? While the intention of the archbishop in seeking co-existence is good, whether Islam the religion will ever embrace his vision of society is another matter.
VirtueOnline: Are there any other difficulties?
Sookhdeo: There is a further difficulty. Many Christians in the Islamic world believe that some Christians in the West have betrayed them, that they have been sacrificed on the altar of interfaith, race and community relations. In their desire to make peace with Islam at any cost, they have sacrificed their brothers and sisters in this process. They also feel that it is patronizing and racist for white people to dialogue with Muslims on their behalf, as if non-Westerners were not capable of doing dialogue should they so desire.
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Ed: From NYT – can’t find online copy.
New York Times JOSEPH LOCONTE January 2, 2006
WASHINGTON
NANCY PELOSI, the Democratic leader in the House, sounded like an Old Testament prophet recently when she denounced the Republican budget for its “injustice and immorality” and urged her colleagues to cast their no votes “as an act of worship” during this religious season.
This, apparently, is what the Democrats had in mind when they vowed after President Bush’s re-election to reclaim religious voters for their party. In the House, they set up a Democratic Faith Working Group. Senator Harry Reid, the minority leader, created a Web site called Word to the Faithful. And Democratic officials began holding conferences with religious progressives. All of this was with the intention of learning how to link faith with public policy. An event for liberal politicians and advocates at the University of California at Berkeley in July even offered a seminar titled “I Don’t Believe in God, but I Know America Needs a Spiritual Left.”
A look at the tactics and theology of the religious left, however, suggests that this is exactly what American politics does not need. If Democrats give religious progressives a stronger voice, they’ll only replicate the misdeeds of the religious right.
Jeffrey Hart offers a compelling assessment of modern conservativism in a Russel Kirkian vein. (Anyone familiar with Kirk’s “The Conservative Mind” will appreciate the piece. Those unaware of Kirk will appreciate the introduction to him here .)
One area where Hart fails in his assessment of abortion. He does not see, it appears to me, that abortion is both a religious and political issue, or at least who politics and religion meet in any discussion of abortion, no matter what side of the question a person holds or what his religious ideas and beliefs might be.
The Wall Street Journal Jeffrey Hart December 30, 2005
Prudence, skepticism and “unbought grace.”
In “The Conservative Mind” (1953), a founding document of the American conservative movement, Russell Kirk assembled an array of major thinkers beginning with Edmund Burke and made a major statement. He proved that conservative thought in America existed, and even that such thought was highly intelligent–a demonstration very much needed at the time.
Today we are in a very different and more complicated situation. Nevertheless, a synthesis is possible, based on what American conservatism has achieved and left unachieved since Kirk’s volume. Any political position is only as important as the thought by which it is derived; the political philosopher presiding will be Burke, but a Burke interpreted for a new constitutional republic and for modern life. Here, then, is my assessment of the ideas held in balance in the American Conservative Mind today.
Article available for seven days only.
Wall Street Journal MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY December 30, 2005
“On May 27, [1966,] 166 Cubans — civilians and members of the military — were executed and submitted to medical procedures of blood extraction of an average of seven pints per person. This blood is sold to Communist Vietnam at a rate of $50 per pint with the dual purpose of obtaining hard currency and contributing to the Vietcong Communist aggression.
“A pint of blood is equivalent to half a liter. Extracting this amount of blood from a person sentenced to death produces cerebral anemia and a state of unconsciousness and paralysis. Once the blood is extracted, the person is taken by two militiamen on a stretcher to the location where the execution takes place.”
— InterAmerican Human Rights Commission, April 7, 1967
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By Rich Barlow | December 31, 2005
Bishop Nikon Liolin wears several miters. He had been archbishop for the Albanian Orthodox Archdiocese. Then earlier this month, the Southbridge resident was enthroned as bishop of New England for the Orthodox Church in America, which counts several ethnic Orthodox parishes as members and has its regional headquarters in Boston. Both elevations were milestones: The diocese of New England had been without a bishop for 13 years, the Albanian archdiocese for 23 years, he says. Liolin attributes the lengthy vacancies to a shortage of candidates because bishops are banned from marriage. (Liolin is a widower.)
It has been almost a millennium since Eastern Christian churches split from Western ones (today, the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches) over doctrine. ”All of the faiths are under attack by some of society’s changing morals and mores,” the new bishop says. ”And the churches and the faiths have to be bastions of morality. . . . There is a moral stance that God has revealed to us.” Excerpts from a recent interview follow.
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Q: Your goal is to increase converts?
A: To increase the number of converts to the church by having more visibility. Without a resident bishop, that made it difficult, because pastors had to work on their own without the on-site direction of a resident hierarch.
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Q: Why should [people] consider being an Orthodox Christian?
A: We want to begin with a relationship with God, a relationship with Christ. When I’m talking about outreach, I’m not talking about trying to reach people that are churched. Many people in the United States attend churches; however, there are more unchurched in the United States than there are churched. So we’re trying to reach people that really have no relationship with God, do not have any faith. The Orthodox do not proselytize for those who already have a Christian base.
Yes, there was a separation between the east and the west churches. However, there are continually dialogues to see how we can come closer. A few years ago, it was an Orthodox priest who was president of the World Council of Churches.
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A group of progressive female theologians of various faiths in Germany formed a religious group to reflect on their traditions from a feminist perspective.
The Inter-religious Conference of European Women Theologians is a conglomeration of Muslim, Christian and Jewish women who want to take religious interpretation into their own hands, Deutsche Welle reported Tuesday.
“Until now, dialogue among women in the church was kept at the level of exchanging recipes or pouring each other tea,” said Rabeya Muller[German convert to Islam], one of the group’s founders.
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Thursday, December 22, 2005
WHITE HOUSE — It’s almost Christmas, and U.S. Navy chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt is on a hunger strike that includes nightly prayers outside the White House.
Lieutenant Klingenschmitt, an Evangelical Episcopal priest, says he won’t eat until President Bush signs an executive order allowing military chaplains to pray according to their beliefs.
Klingenschmitt, who began his fast on Tuesday, says Navy admirals have told him that he can’t pray publicly in Jesus’ name unless he’s wearing civilian clothes. He’s continuing to pray as the Bible says Jesus instructed, but not in uniform.
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MOSCOW, December 28 (Itar-Tass) – Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia said the Moscow Patriarchate expects Vatican to take concrete steps towards settling disagreements between the two major Christian churches.
In an interview with the BBC Russian Service on Wednesday, Alexy II said, “Now it is early to speak about concrete progress in relations. We laud the statements by the new pontiff who calls for continuing a dialogue. We hope that actions will follow words.”
“What we should meet for in order to show the world that we have no problems? But we have problems too. First it is necessary to overcome problems and then meet. We should solve problems that arouse concern in the Russian Orthodox Church and its flock,” the patriarch explained.
He condemned continuing proselytism by Catholics in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. “People, especially children, who are baptised as Orthodox Christians are being tried to catholicise. Many Catholics missioners in Russia create children boarding schools, place kids baptised in the Orthodox Church and teach them as Catholics,” Alexy II said.
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