JERUSALEM, December 3, 2018 (Morning Star News) – A wan effort to do away with the religious designation on ID cards in Egypt reflects the enormity of the discrimination Christians face in a country regarded as a leader of Middle Eastern Islam, rights advocates said.

ID cards are required for almost every aspect of public life in Egypt, and a Christian designation can cause problems for the approximately 10 percent of the population at police stops, checkpoints, hospitals and workplaces. Christianity, Islam and Judaism are the only three religion options on the ID cards.

“Whenever there is a situation that requires showing your ID … you would be categorized right away,” Sherif Azer, head of policy for the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, told Morning Star News.

A bill calling for the elimination of the religious designation on ID cards quickly died in committee on Nov. 14, Azer said. Committee members in the constitutional and legislative committee as well as the religion affairs committee determined that the bill did not meet the requirements for law – an apparent smokescreen, Azer said, for the real reasons for the rejection.

As in previous efforts to end the designation, Azer said, the main reason the bill died was that doing away with the religious designation could allow a Christian man to marry a Muslim woman. That is illegal in Egypt, as…

Following the death of former President George H.W. Bush Friday, Christian leaders released condolence statements praising Bush’s life and legacy.

“President and Mrs. Bush were very close friends of my parents and our family through the years,” said Franklin Graham, son of the late Billy Graham. “He represented the presidency when politics in our country was more civil. He was a man of character who served our nation during war and led our nation during peace.”

“He was a man of many accomplishments, but one of the greatest was his family—two sons to serve as governors and one to follow as president of our nation. Our prayers are with the entire Bush family.”

President George H.W. Bush was a man of character who served our nation during war and led our nation during peace. He represented the presidency when politics in our country was more civil.

— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) December 1, 2018

Bush, the 41^stPresident of the United States, died Friday in Houston. He was 94. Bush’s wife of 73 years, Barbara Bush, died in April.

“George Bush was a great American, an extraordinary wartime leader, and a good friend,” said Pat Robertson, founder of The Christian Broadcasting Network. “I mourn the passing of a great American, and wish his family well.”

Bush served as Ronald Reagan’s vice president before winning the 1988 presidential…

Former President George H.W. Bush had a “great faith” in God and looked forward to heaven during his final hours, according to his friend and former secretary of state, James Baker. 

Bush passed away Friday at the age of 94. He was the nation’s 41st president, having won election in 1988 after serving two terms as vice president under Ronald Reagan. He also was President Ford’s CIA director and President Nixon’s ambassador to the United Nations. His son, George W. Bush, was elected president in 2000.  

Baker was a close friend. 

“I’m comforted … by the way in which 41 was called to heaven,” Baker said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “He had a very gentle passing.” 

Baker went to Bush’s home at 7:15 the morning he died.

“And one of his aides said, ‘Mr. President, Secretary Baker’s here.’ And he looked up. He opened both eyes. He looked at me. He said, ‘Where are we going?’ And I said, ‘We’re going to heaven, Jefe.’ And he said, ‘That’s where I want to go.’”

“Jefe,” Bush’s nickname, is Spanish for “chief.” 

Bush “had great faith in God,” Baker told CBS’ Face the Nation. 

“He was a religious person who didn’t wear his religion on his sleeve but he was a man of great faith,” Baker said. 

Bush was Episcopalian. Author Doug Meacham, in his biography on Bush, Destiny…

“The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert shared the moment he turned away from atheism and back to Christianity with America Media recently. 

According to CBN News, Colbert was brought up Catholic, but at some point, he turned away from religion, believing that the God he was raised to believe in was not real.

That mindset would be flipped on its head, however, by a gift from a kind stranger one cold day in Chicago.

In a video interview with America Media in their Faith in Focus series, Colbert shares that when he was 22 years old, he was standing on a street corner in Chicago, when a man noticed him and gave him a small, green Gideons New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs. 

Colbert told the interviewer, Fr. James Martin, a Jesuit priest, that he cracked open the frozen pocket bible to the glossary and turned to the first verse on dealing with anxiety.

“It was Matthew, chapter 5, it was the Sermon, ‘And so I say to you, do not worry, for who among you by worrying can change a single hair on his head or add a cubit to the span of his life?’ And I was absolutely, immediately lightened,” Colbert recalled. “For the first time, I understood the real meaning of the phrase, ‘It spoke to me.’ Like it read off the page, the words of Christ read off the page,” he continued.

Colbert said he stood on the street corner on…

NAIROBI, Kenya, November 30, 2018 (Morning Star News) – Officers arrested six pastors in eastern Uganda on Saturday (Nov. 24) after hundreds of Muslims, furious over a public talk comparing Christianity with Islam, descended on the local police station, sources said.

Following a series of public events earlier this month at which mosque leaders criticized Christianity in Sironko, about 22 kilometers (14 miles) northeast of Mbale, the local Pastors’ Fellowship had invited Pastor Moses Wangaia, a popular Christian apologist based in Mbale, to speak at a series of open-air talks defending the faith.

After a week of peaceful debate, Pastor Wangaia, an ex-Muslim sheikh (teacher) formerly known as Hajji Bidongo Byayesu, arrived for the series of talks designed to refute three weeks of Muslim speakers’ arguments against the designation of Jesus as the Son of God. Tensions began as Pastor Wangaia gave his testimony of how he converted to Christianity and used the Koran, Bible and Hadith (sayings and deeds of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam) to make his case, sources said.

The pastor pointed out the differences between the Koran’s portrayal of Issa (Jesus) and the Christ of the Bible, and he also pointed out the differences between the koranic Allah and the biblical God, sources said.

Police permitted the 70 pastors and 30 churches that organized the talks to stage them over a…