Archive for the 'Religion' Category
RENSSELAER One drop will save the world from sin.
Thats the reason Precious Blood Father Leonard Kostka decided to create a One Drop cross. Available as a pin or necklace, it serves as a reminder that one drop of the blood of Jesus can save the world from trouble.
We get so used to the Eucharist, we need a pinprick sometimes to revive our devotion, he said.
The lapel pin or necklace consists of a sterling silver Celtic cross with an almandine garnet in the center. Father Kostka consulted Rensselaer silversmith and St. Augustine parishioner Lana Zimmer. They decided they liked the Celtic cross and she developed the design. A company custom casts the cross and she assembles the parts.
Father Kostka is a former Saint Josephs College professor and a former pastor at St. Augustine in Rensselaer.
Zimmer, who also teaches in the education department at Saint Josephs College, said about 150 people around the country have one of the crosses. Father Kostka said at least one priest in Africa has one, also.
He wanted to use a ruby instead of a garnet, but the cost would be prohibitive, he said.
The crosses, which went on sale in December 2006, symbolize, in a world where the more violent the better, the one drop needed to clean it from all the garbage, Father Kostka said. Because symbols speak better than words, he decided to dramatize it.
He stressed the sacrifice Christ made, citing Adoro Te Devote, in which St. Thomas Aquinas refers to Jesus as a loving pelican.
Pelicans were once thought to feed their blood to their young by piercing their own breasts, Father Kostka said.
Father Kostka said the hymn has the theme that one drop is ransom for the entire worlds guilt.
The reason its called most precious blood instead of simply precious blood is because of its ability to nourish and cleanse, he said.
The crosses cost $48, which covers materials and labor.
Father Kostka, who said hes never done something like this before, doesnt receive any money from the crosses and hasnt tried to advertise them much.
Betty Tonner, a parishioner at St. Augustine, Rensselaer, said she first heard about the cross at a Precious Blood Companion meeting at which Father Kostka talked about his idea.
That idea sort of stuck with me, she said. She bought one that year and the next Christmas bought five more for her daughters-in-law and her daughter.
She said the cross has grown to have a special place in her heart and she wears it everywhere. When shes at Mass she holds onto it when the wine is consecrated, hoping for a special connection to the blood of Christ and for special blessings. It just rings a bell in my heart, she said.
She also treasures the cross because of her admiration for Father Kostka, who she calls our resident saint.
For more information, e-mail lzim53@yahoo.com.
May 18 2012 | Religion | Comments Off
Story By: by John Biewen
Winslow Sherrill has two daughters who are lesbian. While he loves them and gets along with their partners, he’s going to vote in favor of banning gay marriage in North Carolina.
North Carolina’s African-American voters could be crucial in Tuesday’s vote over the proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and civil unions. Blacks make up a little more than 20 percent of the state’s population, and some polls show they strongly favor a ban.
While activists on both sides make phone calls and put up yard signs, many African-Americans are struggling with the issue inside their churches and homes.
A Pastor’s Perspective
Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman is pastor of an African Methodist Episcopal Zion church in the town of Hickory, in North Carolina’s Appalachian foothills. Slender and 61, he’s a man who chooses his words carefully.
“Many African-Americans â and it would be very true of my own family of origin â have what I would consider homophobic ideations,” he says.
Spearman says an incident about 15 years ago helped to change his thinking. He was a minister and student adviser at a church-affiliated, historically black college. He says many gay and lesbian students came to talk about their struggles, and one young man told Spearman he planned to commit suicide.
“I knew that if I had let him out of that office that night, the next thing I would do with him was a funeral. I befriended him,” he says.
Spearman has taken a public stand against the marriage amendment, calling it an anti-gay attack that will only cause harm. But he’ll be the first to tell you that many â maybe most â of the people in his own congregation see things differently.
Spearman’s Clinton Tabernacle A.M.E. Zion Church is on a curving road on the east side of Hickory, where most of the town’s black population lives. On a Wednesday night, about 25 mostly older people sing hymns before the weekly bible study.
As his text for the night, Spearman chooses the Gospel story of the Good Samaritan, who helps the man who’s been beaten and robbed and left on the road to die.
“Say that this victim is a victim of gay bashing,” he says.
Spearman says in the story, Jesus is telling them to love everyone, including those they despise the most.
“Jesus is always calling us away from our comfort zones,” he says. “If you look at his life, he is always out there doing something to liberate somebody’s life, from something. And he expects us to do the very same thing.”
Whose Judgment Call?
So far, Spearman’s flock seems to be with him. Sylvia Shuford is a smallish woman in her 50s. She says as a home health aide, she’s worked with patients with HIV.
“Gays, [transvestites] â I’ve had to deal with all of them,” she says, “and God has given me a discernment where I can look beyond, and I see people.”
Shuford’s attitude changes fast, though, when Spearman turns from love-thy-neighbor tolerance of gay people to the question of marriage equality. She gets in an argument with another parishioner, Bari Tiggett, who says North Carolina should not make a moral judgment about who can marry.
“I feel like ultimately, God’s the one that’s gonna handle that,” Tiggett says.
Shuford agrees â to a point.
“I don’t love you any less … if you marry a woman,” she says, “but all I’m gonna say is this: That’s not what God’s words say.”
‘Baby Steps’
From the back of the room, 74-year-old Winslow Sherrill asks a question. If God made people male and female, “where does the gay come in at?”
“That’s a question that’s just as old as anything else there is,” Spearman answers.
Sherrill retired after working in various manufacturing plants. Of his 13 grown children, two are openly lesbian.
“So for some reason it’s there. I don’t know what we can do to get it out,” he says. “But I love them just as much as I ever loved ‘em.”
Sherrill has dinner with his daughters and gets along with their partners. But he says on May 8, he will vote for the amendment to write a ban on same-sex marriage into the state constitution.
“I don’t care how you go around gay marriage. To me, it just ain’t right,” he says.
Sherrill’s daughter, Anita, is 47. She shares a home with her partner. Anita Sherrill runs a knitting machine at a local T-shirt factory. She’s a Christian who’s now convinced the Bible does not condemn homosexuality. Yet she finds the views of her father and many other black North Carolinians very familiar.
“They’re taking baby steps with it,” she says.
Anita Sherrill says that while some may say loving gay people is the Christian thing to do, they also say, “They ain’t getting married in my church!”
“I mean, I’m black, and that’s just like saying, ‘Yeah, you can come in my house, but you’re not sitting down,’ ” she says.
Spearman guesses about a quarter of his parishioners support gay marriage, and at least half are opposed. His effort to get his church talking about the subject did achieve at least one thing: It led recently to the first conversation ever between Winslow Sherrill and his daughter about her sexuality.
“He said, ‘Well, girl, don’t you go getting married on me now.’ I said, ‘I’m going to get married as soon as you all ignorant people get out of my way and leave us alone, I’m gonna get married,’ ” she says and laughs.
Activists in the marriage amendment campaign have appealed to clergy across North Carolina, including African-American pastors. The two sides have said, in effect: Tell your people to vote for (or against) the marriage amendment â it’s the Christian thing to do.
This story came to us from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
May 12 2012 | Religion | Comments Off
Insight: German sect victims seek escape from Chilean nightmare pastStephen Brown and Oliver Ellrodt (Reuters, May 9, 2012)
Krefeld, Germany – Werner Schmidtke has a recurring nightmare: he is in a room full of boys strapped to metal beds, naked and blindfolded with wax plugs in their ears, being tortured by a man with an electric prod. Any boy who screams is plunged into a tub full of freezing water and given more electric shocks.
For Schmidtke, who is now 51, the scene is all too real. He was subjected to this treatment as a youngster in a building known as “Neukra” (short for “New Hospital” in German) in Colonia Dignidad, a secretive sect set up in central Chile in 1961 by Paul Schaefer, a German World War Two medic turned evangelical preacher.
To this day, Schmidtke does not know why he was among the boys singled out for the torture from among Schaefer’s 300 German followers, who endured decades of virtual slavery until Schaefer fled the Chilean police in 1997. Schaefer was arrested in Argentina and died in a Santiago prison in 2010 aged 88.
Poor, badly educated, and physically and mentally traumatized, some 100 sect members drifted back to their roots in the area north of the German city of Duesseldorf where the sect was born and where state welfare offered them help.
To their horror, Schaefer’s right-hand man, Hartmut Hopp, a doctor who received a five-year jail term in Chile in 2011 for his role in the abuse, also turned up there last May.
Hopp, 67, had skipped Chile before his final sentencing, and Chile wants him back. But the German constitution forbids the extradition of its own citizens.
So Schmidtke and about 120 other Colonia Dignidad survivors, backed by a German rights group, are now plaintiffs in a German investigation into Hopp, for aiding and abetting the sexual abuse of 25 children between 1993 and 1997. They plan to sue the Chilean and German states for failing to protect them despite decades of warnings about what was going on inside the fortified enclave.
Schmidtke wants official acknowledgement of what happened, as well as money to help him and his wife Katharina – another Colonia Dignidad survivor – raise their two young daughters.
“The people of Germany have a right to know what happened too,” said Schmidtke in his tidy flat, which features two canaries singing in a cage, artificial flowers and a print of an Alpine landscape.
When Reuters tried to talk to Hopp at his home in Krefeld town centre, he called the police.
Hopp’s lawyer, Helfried Roubicek, also declined to be interviewed. But he wrote in an email that Hopp was cooperating with the court and that he might one day present the media with evidence that “the charges he is being investigated for by the prosecutors in Krefeld will, in the end, not be upheld under the German penal code and trial law”. Asked to explain, he would only say his arguments would be based on “German law”.
Chile filed an extradition request for Hopp last August. The Chilean judge leading the investigations into Colonia Dignidad said he could not discuss the case.
Germany’s foreign ministry confirmed that Hopp could not be extradited but declined to comment further.
LOOKING FOR GOD
A smiling man with spectacles, a sparse beard and lank blond hair, Schmidtke’s voice falters as he recounts his childhood of hard labor clearing woods and stony fields from dawn to dusk, often on a diet of bread and water.
He sailed to Chile in 1962 as a two-year-old, along with his mother and nine brothers and sisters, one of whom died as a child in Colonia Dignidad. His parents were convinced to sell the family home and follow Schaefer to South America by his powerful preaching and promise of a more godly life. Schmidtke’s father stayed on in Germany to look after the sect’s business interests and joined them in Chile eight years later.
On board the ship the children were separated from their mother, whom Schmidtke remembers as a “good-hearted woman”, and were then kept apart like the other families in the enclave. In their new home, Schmidtke lived in the timber “Kinderhaus”, or Children’s House, where Schaefer had his private apartment. It was here that he first encountered the charismatic leader.
“One or two boys would be taken to his room every day, and one day I was called,” Schmidtke told Reuters. “He sat me down on his bed and started to stroke me and ask me questions, to talk the way a father talks to his child, and I had no parents anymore.
“I have never forgotten it, my first dealings with Schaefer,” he said. “I was about seven or eight. That is when the abuse and rape started.”
Schaefer followed the teachings of American preacher William M. Branham, one of the founders of the “faith healing” movement in the 1940s and 50s. Born in a log cabin in Kentucky, Branham said he had been visited by angels and attracted tens of thousands of followers with sermons that advocated a strict adherence to the Bible, a woman’s duty to obey her husband and apocalyptic visions, such as Los Angeles sinking beneath the ocean.
Former members of the sect say that Schaefer preached against “sins of the flesh.” He also segregated men and women, they say, subjecting all but a few to enforced celibacy. Anyone who disobeyed was brutally punished, often by Schaefer personally.
When accusations of abuse and torture first cropped up in the media in the 1970s, Schaefer, known to his followers as “Permanent Uncle”, urged sect members to stage hunger strikes in protest. Appearing frail and confused on his arrest, he was taken in a wheelchair to court where his lawyers said he was too ill for trial. He never acknowledged his crimes publicly, though in 2006 some sect members issued an apology through the Chilean press.
“I have to live every day with the consequences of what he did to me, to us,” said Schmidtke.
He says he tried to escape the enclave five times, but always returned. “I had nobody to go to. As a child you need your parents to go and cry to and say ‘I can’t take any more’. But the only answer was to run away.”
“ONE BIG FAMILY”
Public opinion in Germany turned against Schaefer in 1988, when two sect members who managed to escape via Canada – Georg and Lotti Packmor – gave testimony to a parliamentary hearing in the then-capital, Bonn, into whether German citizens were being forced to live in the enclave against their will.
When Lotti testified, she not only spoke about Schaefer but implicated Hopp, whom Schaefer had sent to medical school, and allowed to marry and own a car. As well as running the sect’s hospital, Hopp had contact with officials and diplomats and when Packmor’s first escape bid in 1980 failed, Hopp was one of those sent to fetch her. “Another peep out of you and you’ll get an injection to keep you quiet,” she recalled him saying.
In the secretive community, whose members were ruled by fear and ordered to spy on each other, it was not always easy to categorize victims and perpetrators. As a youngster, Hopp had also tried to flee, Packmor said, getting as far as Argentina.
Hopp, who travelled to Bonn to defend the sect at the 1988 hearings, testified that the group was “one big family” which in a quarter of a century had not had a single divorce or suicide, and whose members were free to leave at any time and were not subjected to forced labor.
“Despite that, there have always been people or groups who have slandered our society or individual members in an incredibly scandalous way by feeding misinformation to the press,” Hopp said in his testimony to the Bundestag.
SECT DOCTOR
German prosecutors began to investigate Hopp after the Bundestag hearing, but it was not until Schaefer’s downfall a decade later that Chilean authorities began investigating and arresting other leaders of the sect.
After Hopp was convicted of being an accomplice in the sexual abuse of children in Chile in 2011 and sentenced to five years in prison, he fled to Argentina and then to Krefeld.
About a dozen former sect members now attend an evangelical church in Krefeld run by Ewald Frank, who, like Schaefer before him, follows the teachings of Branham. Frank, who travels the world preaching, took legal action against local news outlets for reporting that his “Free Mission Krefeld” sheltered former sect leaders like Hopp. He said in a statement that his congregation shielded victims of the sect, not its leaders, and added in an email to Reuters: “For us, that unpleasant chapter for the time being is closed.”
After Hopp’s return to Germany, the doctor and his wife were hounded out of one home by neighbors who learned of his past as the “Sektenarzt” (“sect doctor”). Local authorities placed him in a new home for his own protection.
COLLABORATORS
In Germany, crimes against children must be prosecuted within 10 years of the victims reaching 18 years of age, which is why the charges Hopp is being investigated for – aiding and abetting the sexual abuse of 25 children of German and Chilean nationality – date from 1993 to 1997. The suspicion is that Hopp knew children in his care were being abused “but did nothing about it”, said the prosecutor.
Krefeld’s Chief Public Prosecutor Hans-Dieter Menden said the case will take time, not least because the legal documents between Chile and Germany require translation. He declined to speculate exactly how long.
The former sect members involved in the civil suit against the German and Chilean states are represented by Manfred Hempel, himself born in Colonia Dignidad in 1967.
Hempel escaped at the age of 20, when security briefly relaxed after Schaefer’s flight to Argentina, and worked his way through school and university. He is now a lawyer at the Supreme Court in the Chilean capital Santiago.
Hempel and lawyers at the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights say they have catalogued testimonies of physical and sexual abuse, the use of electric shocks and of drugs to dope young sect members and keep them obedient.
On a visit to Berlin the softly-spoken lawyer said that his suit would charge “that nearly 300 German citizens were enslaved for decades and abused, and that the Chilean and German states connived with this and were collaborators with the (former Chilean dictator Augusto) Pinochet regime in this violence”.
Since Pinochet stepped down in 1990, Chile’s National Truth and Reconciliation Commission and a panel on political imprisonment and torture have documented the sect’s links to the dictator’s DINA secret police, which used it as a secret torture centre. In January, former DINA chief Manuel Contreras received a 10-year jail sentence for the 1976 kidnap of three left-wing opponents of the Pinochet regime – one of them a pregnant woman – last seen alive in Colonia Dignidad. Condemned with him were other DINA officers and sect leaders including Hopp, who could not be sentenced as he had already fled Chile.
FROM TORTURE TO TOURISM
Today Colonia Dignidad, rebranded as “Villa Baviera” in the late 1980s, wants to put its macabre history behind it and promote itself as a tourist destination. After Schaefer’s death the Chilean state put the property under legal administration to make provisions for the payment of compensation to Schaefer’s victims. It has a hotel, and offers horse riding and weddings. Ageing survivors of the sect now relax together watching television, strictly forbidden in Schaefer’s time.
“The idea is for Villa Baviera to no longer be isolated but open to visitors all year long,” said tourism manager Anna Schnellenkamp.
For Schmidtke, there is no forgetting. He says Hopp is a coward for failing to use his position to speak out about what was happening. He also believes Hopp knows where the sect’s fortunes have been stashed offshore, money he says should go to Schaefer’s victims.
“So many people have to live with the consequences of this evil regime and Dr. Hopp is one of the people most to blame,” said Schmidtke.
For now Hopp, who keeps a low profile, is free to move about Germany or even leave the country, but will probably not do so “because he would run the risk of being extradited to Chile”, prosecutor Menden said. “He’s relatively safe here.”
Published by: WorldWide Religious News (
wwrn.org)
May 12 2012 | Religion | Comments Off
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – According to CEO Dr. Silas Simiyu, the first phase in 2016 will generate 400 megawatts, which is enough to light up 500,000 households and run 300,000 small businesses.
“It is situated 180 kilometers northwest of Nairobi, and will have a capacity to produce 1,600 megawatts of electricity by the time we implement all three phases in 2030,” Simiyu says.
Policy and economic analyst at the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis, Nashon Adero, the first phase of the plant will have a significant impact on the country as it moves towards industrialization.
“At the moment, the country consumes 1,600 megawatts,” Adero said. “Four hundred megawatts is therefore an additional 25 percent. And given that the country has embarked on other ambitious projects of green power generation, such as the Lake Turkana Wind Power project, which will generate an additional 300 megawatts, Kenya will become an economic giant within the region.”
In addition, construction on the Lake Turkana Wind Power project will begin in June. When completed, it will be sub-Saharan Africa’s largest wind farm.
Kenya is already recognized as eastern and central Africa’s financial, communication and transportation hub, with the country’s gross domestic product increasing by four to five percent in the last 10 years.
“Kenya’s GDP is currently the largest in the (East African) region given its strong agricultural industry, particularly in tea and coffee production, and floriculture,” Ezekiel Esipisu, Habitat for Humanity’s regional operations manager for East Africa and the Middle East says.
“This, coupled with investments at the Nairobi Stock Exchange and the manufacturing industry, means that the country is one of the leading economies in Africa.
“All of Kenya’s neighbors have power deficits. The roadmap towards further power production will definitely boost development,” Esipisu says. “We will see Kenya move closer to industrialization, and it will become a real economic giant in the region.”
About 60 percent of Kenya’s power is hydroelectric, which is generated when falling water from a dam is used to drive turbines. When this supply becomes unsteady — Kenya has been subjected to perennial drought and erratic rainfall, the resulting power cuts have hampered the country’s growth.
From July to August 2011, the government was forced to implement power rationing after the water levels in the country’s major dams dropped. At the time Kenya was generating about 1,200 megwatts of power, while demand increased at an average rate of eight percent a year, according to the Ministry of Energy.
The 2011 power cuts cost Kenya over $96 million. However, the worst period of power rationing was between 1999 and 2001, which resulted in an estimated loss of four percent of Kenya’s GDP, about $400 million.
“Hydroelectric power generation is solely dependent on climatic conditions,” John Omenge, the chief geologist at Kenya’s Ministry of Energy says. “During a drought, for example, the water levels will definitely drop, reducing the amount of power generated.
“Geothermal power generation is therefore the answer. It is one of the most reliable methods of producing electric energy, because such sources are not affected by environmental calamities such as drought,” he said.
A version of this story was first published by Inter Press Service news agency.
© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.
April 28 2012 | Religion | Comments Off
Christ Isn’t Missing From ‘The Voice’ — Just the Biblical JargonGreg Garrett ("Huffington Post," April 24, 2012)
USA – According to CNN, “Christ is missing” from The Voice, the new contemporary language Bible from Thomas Nelson Publishers, while Bob Smietana’s article for Religion News Service, which has appeared in USA Today and in other newspapers around the world opens with this lede: “The name Jesus Christ doesn’t appear in ‘The Voice,’ a new translation of the Bible.”
Whether accidentally or intentionally misleading, this angle has prompted some hysteria on the Interwebs, which is not in itself surprising. Some Christians are suspicious of any translation besides the King James Authorized Version, now 400 years old. But by choosing to describe “The Voice” in this way, CNN and these news reports have guaranteed that people would jump to the conclusion of a commenter on Gene Veith’s blog: “If the name of Jesus doesn’t appear in this book … then it is ‘the voice’ of the Devil.”
That CNN would focus on this angle — and that people would leap to the conclusion that something unholy is going on at the world’s largest evangelical publisher — did come as a surprise to David Capes, the lead scholar on the project. Dr. Capes described himself in an e-mail to me as an “early high Christology guy,” and I know him to be what Larry Hurtado calls him on his blog: a devout Christian and a fine scholar.
I know this because I have worked alongside David Capes on “The Voice” project for the past seven years. I sat with Chris Seay in the Nashville offices of Thomas Nelson a million years ago when we pitched the project to them. I was the lead writer on the Gospel of Mark and many of the other books of the Bible rendered for “The Voice,” and I worked with Dr. Capes closely throughout, including on the Letter to the Hebrews, where he sat by my side for three days as we worked through phrases, images and symbols, me the artist trying to make something beautiful, him the scholar making sure I didn’t wander away from the original Greek meanings.
By calling himself someone with a high Christology, Dr. Capes was confirming that he believes that Jesus is both the central figure of the Scriptures and the Messiah, the son of God (“the Christ,” to use the old Latin title, or “anointed one”). Dr. Capes — like everyone else I know who has worked on “The Voice” project — willingly affirmed the traditional Christian creeds, and the media-amplified fact that the phrase “Jesus Christ” does not appear in “The Voice” doesn’t mean that Jesus is not front and center, the leading character in the drama, the reason for the season.
No, it simply means that, as Dr. Capes told me (and has also told these various media sources), “The Voice” sought a translation of this honorific that communicates more clearly with contemporary readers, since “most Bible readers in this age of rampant biblical illiteracy misunderstand ‘Christ’ as a ‘second name.’ We are trying to restore the titular sense of [Christos/Christ].”
In other words, for all those — Bible readers and neophytes alike — who think either that “Jesus Christ” is a name and a surname, rather than a name and a messianic title, or who simply don’t know what it means, “The Voice” is employing non-theological description that might cut through the centuries and say something fresh and meaningful. “The Anointed One” is actually more literal than simply repeating the Latin “Christ” — and says more, more meaningfully.
Throughout “The Voice,” in fact, we sought plain-English substitutes for biblical words and terms that don’t communicate anything to today’s readers — or that may come freighted down with misleading associations. We chose not to use the word “angel,” for example. Pop culture and bad theology have turned angels into big-eyed guardian babysitters who were human in their previous life, rather than awe-inspiring messengers from the Most High God who are most definitely another form of creation. We described the rite of baptism and explained what it’s for, rather than simply relying on the word “baptism,” which has come to mean many different things to different people.
Throughout the process, we relied on and gloried in the creative tension that came from having writers like myself, Chris, Brian McLaren, Don Miller, Lauren Winner and Phyllis Tickle trying to make the Scriptures speak with new beauty, while the scholars, led by David Capes, pushed back and made certain that we didn’t leave the text behind in the process.
The result is not a word-for-word translation, nor did we ever claim it was. But it is a contemporary-language rendering that is readable, beautiful and dramatic, while remaining true to the original Greek and Hebrew texts. Much has been made of the fact that we have used “The Voice” instead of “The Word” in the Prologue to the Gospel of John, but since I was there from the beginning — and since it speaks directly to this manufactured controversy — I can tell you why we made that powerful and somewhat controversial choice: We believed that Jesus, the Word, was the Voice that was speaking in the creation account in Genesis, that Voice that spoke creation into being.
As I mentioned, all of us who worked on “The Voice” affirmed the Nicene Creed, which of course says that “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made.”
“The Voice” has drawn vehement critics since before any part of it was published. If you don’t like the translation, that’s your right. If God continues to speak to you through your King James, or New International Version, or New Revised Standard Version, that’s cool, and more than cool.
But let’s be clear about this one thing. Don’t object to Jesus being de-centered or otherwise missing from this translation.
Jesus is still Lord in “The Voice” — he’s just had his name changed so that today’s readers will know who he is.
Published by: WorldWide Religious News (
wwrn.org)
April 26 2012 | Religion | Comments Off
New wave of well-off Pakistani women drawn to conservative IslamJason Burke ("The Guardian," April 9, 2012)
Pakistan – All the women working in the information technology division of the Bank of Punjab’s headquarters in the western Pakistani city of Lahore wear headscarves tightly wound around their cheeks and chin, framing their faces as they tap at their keyboards. A year or so ago not one covered their heads with the hijab.
“I was the first,” says 28-year-old Shumaila, as she waited with some impatience in the city’s iStore for her new £800 Apple MacBook to be loaded with the software she had ordered.
“I started reading the Qur’an properly and praying five times a day. No one made me wear the hijab. That would be impossible,” she laughs brightly. “I showed the way to the other girls at work.”
They are not alone. Though there are no statistics and most evidence is anecdotal, a new wave of interest in more conservative strands of Islam among wealthier and better educated women in Pakistan appears clear.
It is part of a broader cultural and religious shift seen in the country over decades but which observers say has accelerated in the past 10 years.
“The other girls who were working with us left.” Shumaila said. “They found the new environment a bit unfriendly.”
One indication of the trend is the growing proportion of women within the conservative religious political organisation Jamaat-e-Islami (JI). Syed Munawar Hassan, the leader of JI in Pakistan, said that women made up an increasing proportion of the organisation’s 6 million members and 30,000 organisers. “Our women’s wing is doing very well,” he said. “They are some of our best organisers.”
JI, like its counterparts elsewhere in the Islamic world, has traditionally recruited among the lower middle class, swollen in recent decades in Pakistan by rapid urbanisation and economic growth. But the new wave of devotion is now touching the elite in a new way. Al-Huda (The Guidance), an organisation set up in 1994 to spread a new and often rigorous piety among Pakistani women, has gained a foothold among the upper reaches of society.
The group, which critics accuse of encouraging intolerant strands of Islam influenced by those practised in Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, has grown from an initial single small centre in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, to a presence in every city, and is expanding among the Pakistani diaspora abroad.
Members attend intensive courses in Qur’anic studies and Arabic and are directed to do social welfare work, too. Not all enjoy the experience of al-Huda, however.
“I found it very limiting and rigid. But it is very popular among women from very wealthy families that are quite conservative. Recently there are a lot of young women coming to a very traditional Islam. There is a deep desire for learning,” said Maha Jehangir, a 30-year-old consultant and former al-Huda member.
Jehangir, who lives in a large house in one of the most exclusive parts of Islamabad, said questions posed by the events of the past decade were particularly important for young women.
“People who grew up within the war on terror are asking, what does it mean to be a Nato ally? Is India our worst enemy? We are bombarded by all this information and there is a deep need for answers. That leads to religious inquiry,” Jehangir said.
Many found the answers in conservative strands of religious practice, she said.
Other influences that underpin the new piety among wealthy women include the experience of many Pakistanis who have spent time in the Gulf.
Amna, a 21-year-old business student whose father was a manager for a major firm in Saudi Arabia, said that it was wrong to think that women who were richer or more educated would inevitably be more secular.
“Everything we learn comes from the Qur’an. Maths, computers, banking â the Qur’an contains everything,” said Amna, who wears a Saudi-style full veil covering all but her eyes even at the all-female college in Islamabad where she studies.
However, if there is a demand for more rigorous, literalist strands of Islamic practice among wealthy and educated women, there is also an interest in more tolerant varieties.
In Lahore, the al-Mawrid institute is attracting more and more “educated ladies, doctors, professors, housewives who do not know about Islam”, says Kaukab Shehzad, a 43-year-old teacher.
The institute, in the wealthy suburb of Model Town, was set up three years ago but had to move after receiving threats from radical scholars, she said. “We read the Qur’an in detail but we discuss other religions too. We were attacked for saying that the niqab [Saudi-style veil] is not justified in the Qur’anic teachings and for arguing against their interpretation of the idea of jihad,” she said.
Though solidarity with Muslim communities overseas is encouraged by many conservative practitioners, many of the new devout shun such a global vision and identity. Shumaila, the bank worker and Apple enthusiast, says she is not interested in events in the Middle East: “We’ve enough going on here.”
Jahangir, the former al-Huda member in Islamabad, recently spent two years studying in a religious school of the Deobandi branch of Islam, also followed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. A graduate of both Massachusetts and London Universities, she too said that political activism was of little interest: “I don’t try to make sense of the Taliban. I find [them] obscure and irrelevant. For me, [the Deobandi school of Islam] is far more of a route to spirituality than a political ideology.”
Published by: WorldWide Religious News (
wwrn.org)
April 22 2012 | Religion | Comments Off
Story By: Weekend Edition Saturday
On Sunday Christians all over the world will observe Easter Sunday with joy. But what is joy? Host Scott Simon talks with Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, contributing editor to America Magazine and author of Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor and Laughter Are at the Heart of Spiritual Life.
April 22 2012 | Religion | Comments Off
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – Named Kaspar, the robot has shaggy black hair, a baseball cap, a few wires protruding from his neck, and striped red socks. He was built by scientists at the University of Hertfordshire at a cost of about $2,118.
Student Eden Sawczenko used to recoil when other little girls held her hand and turned stiff when they hugged her. The 4-year-old girl began playing with Kaspar – and now she hugs everyone.
“She’s a lot more affectionate with her friends now and will even initiate the embrace,” said Claire Sawczenko, Eden’s mother.
There are several versions of Kaspar, including one advanced enough to play Nintendo Wii. The robot is still in the experimental stage, and researchers hope he could be mass-produced one day for a few hundred dollars.
“Children with autism don’t react well to people because they don’t understand facial expressions,” Ben Robins, a senior research fellow in computer science at the University of Hertfordshire says. “Robots are much safer for them because there’s less for them to interpret and they are very predictable.”
There are similar projects in Canada, Japan and the U.S., but the British one is the most advanced according to other European robot researchers not connected with the project.
The newest model of Kaspar is covered in silicone patches that feel like skin to help children become more comfortable with touching people. Almost 300 kids in Britain with autism, a disorder that affects development of social interaction and communication, have played with a Kaspar robot as part of scientific research.
The robot has only a handful of tricks, like saying “Hello, my name is Kaspar. Let’s play together,” The robot also laughs when his sides or feet are touched, raising his arms up and down, or hiding his face with his hands and crying out “Ouch. This hurts,” when he’s slapped too hard.
April 21 2012 | Religion | Comments Off
PARIS, FRANCE (Catholic Online) – Far right candidate, Marine Le Pen told a roaring crowd that the recent bloodshed in Toulouse was proof of what her party had been saying for years. Both Le Pen and Sarkozy have refocused their election platforms on security.
The public has become increasingly xenophobic in the face of what has been perceived as the spread of radical Islam in France.
In March, Le Pen gave an aggressive speech in which she asked, “How many Mohamed Merahs arrive in France every day, in the boats and planes full of immigrants?”
The anti-immigration talk is popular as many French citizens worry about the transformation of the French national identity. In recent decades, immigration into France has swelled and religious and ethnic concerns have grown.
Le Pen asked about Mohamed Merah, “How did he manage to get French nationality?” (Merah was born and raised in France.)
Le Pen pledged that she would take strong steps to protect France from the threat of radical Islam. She pledged to use the French secret services to spy on “radical” mosques, and she promised to deport those who travel to Afghanistan. In the cases of French citizens she even proposed forcing them to wear ankle bracelets.
“We will act with zero tolerance” she pledged.
These comments have drawn worry from French Muslims. The full number of French Muslims are being bundled with the crimes of the individuals who have chosen to set themselves apart by acting out as terrorists. It is wrong to judge by the group, especially on the basis of a few bad actors.
However wrong it may be, it seems to be good politics. Le Pen’s remarks drew stomping feet and applause as the crowd cheered her remarks.
Francois Bayrou, the opposition candidate belonging to the Democratic Movement pegged Le Pen and others correctly when he explained they are “pointing fingers at people because of their ancestry to incite passions, and they are doing it because in the fire, there are votes to be had.” Bayrou is calling for national debate and discussion rather than demonization of a segment of the population.
French national elections will be held on April 22 and May 6. At that time, it will be seen how the French people feel about this divisive and serious issue.
© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.
April 17 2012 | Religion | Comments Off
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon along with many other international leaders have condemned North Korea’s launch of the long-range missile, even though the test was a failure.
North Korea’s official news agency admitted that the missile broke apart, preventing its cargo from reaching Earth orbit.
Pyongyang, in clear defiance of international protests went ahead with the launch. There was widespread belief that the operation was a scarcely disguised test of a long-range ballistic missile that could carry warheads just as easily as satellites.
The three-stage rocket malfunctioned after the first stage exhausted its fuel and fell away. The assembly plunged into the Yellow Sea without hitting land or striking any of the many vessels observing the test from international waters.
Ban said North Korea’s actions were “deplorable,” going against the “firm and unanimous stance of the international community.” He also said such a test of a missile with possible military applications was a violation of U.N. resolutions.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said North Korea’s action was a definite threat to regional security, and a sign that Pyongyang prefers “wasting its money on weapons and propaganda displays while the North Korean people go hungry.”
In response, the U.S. has canceled plans to send additional food aid to North Korea, and considers that sanctions could be tightened even more if Pyongyang conducts “further provocative actions.”
Japanese Defense Minister Naoki Tanaka said the rocket appeared to have reached a height of 120 kilometers above the sea before it split apart.
“We have received information that there was some sort of object launched,” said Tanaka. “It appears to have flown for over a minute and then fallen into the ocean. There has been absolutely no effect on our territory.”
South Korean naval vessels in addition to U.S., Russian and Chinese ships were in the launch zone searching for rocket debris.
The missile launch was apparently timed to coincide with the birth centenary of the communist state’s founder, Kim Il Sung. The European Union, the Group of Eight industrialized nations, Russia, Germany and Britain have all agreed the rocket launch should not have taken place. North Korea’s neighboring states South Korea, its only ally China and Japan all condemned the action.
The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to discuss the issue.
© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM
April 16 2012 | Religion | Comments Off
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