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Two black leaders who were prevented from demonstrating outside the Smithsonian African-American history museum against a decades-long “genocide” carried out against black children through abortion resolved a free-speech case against the federal government in their favor.
Rev. Clenard H. Childress Jr., pastor of a black church in the Newark, New Jersey, area, and Jacqueline Hawkins, director of minority outreach for the nonprofit Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, filed suit after an official with the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and uniformed police officers from the Office of Protection Services told them they could not stand outside the museum with their sign.
The protest in February was part of a project by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, or CBR, that uses photo-mural exhibits and literature to “demonstrate the devastation of abortion’s consequences on the African-American community.”
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Tens of Thousands Participate in Jerusalem March, Celebrating Unification
Last Tuesday, Oct. 10, marked a special day in Israel. Tens of thousands of people from 80 different countries around the world gathered in the city to mark the 50th anniversary of its unification.
CharismaNews.com reports that Jerusalem’s mayor Nir Barkat welcomed all who had gathered there to participate in the annual march.
Participants were from all walks of life and from many different places. The procession included tourists, Israeli Defense Forces soldiers, and security personnel. Street artists, dancers, and musicians added to the festivities and made it a lively march.
“I’m a Christian, but I feel connected to Israel,” said Marissa, a participant from Catalonia in Spain. “I do not know how to explain it, but I feel very close to it. All Christians feel that way.”
“I came because I love Israel,” said Jenny, another participant from the U.S. “This is my 20th trip here. We are happy to do things for Israel. It’s an amazing country.”
“The Jerusalem march is a tradition which lasted for more than 60 years. Every year it is exciting again, though as this year we celebrate 50 years of unification it is even more exciting than ever,” added Mayor Barkat.
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Indonesian Christians Living in New Hampshire Fear Possible Deportation
Indonesian Christians who fled their home country after suffering religious persecution and found a safe haven in the state of New Hampshire are now in danger of being deported.
SRNNews.com reports that there are about 2,000 Chinese Indonesian Christians who living in New Hampshire. They fled persecution in their home country in 1998. That year, about 1,000 people were killed in the violence.
Most of the Chinese Indonesian Christians live in small communities on the New Hampshire seacoast. They primarily work in factories and other blue collar jobs. Some are also pastors.
One such family is the Lumangkuns. Although they are not legal residents of the U.S., in previous years, as long as they checked in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, they were allowed to stay.
Due to President Trump’s new immigration policies, however, this year may be different. Families like the Lumangkuns fear they will be deported back to Indonesia where they may face more persecution for their faith.
Although Indonesia’s laws guarantee freedom of religion, Christians often end up being marginalized or persecuted in the 87 percent Muslim country.
Only a few months ago, the former governor of Jakarta, who is a member of the Chinese-Christian minority, was sentenced to two years in jail for blaspheming Islam.
The Indonesian Christians living in New Hampshire fear that this is the sort of religious climate to which they would be returning were they to be deported.
They do have a number of U.S. political leaders fighting for them, however. U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) hopes to find a way to allow members of the Indonesian Christian communities to remain in the U.S.
“It’s totally inconsistent with American values,” she said, referring to their possible deportation. “This is a country that was born of people that were fleeing religious persecution.”
Beth Moore (Living Proof Ministries with Beth Moore/Facebook)
Join us on our podcast each weekday for an interesting story, well told, from Charisma News. Listen at charismapodcastnetwork.com.
“Me, too.”
These two words may flood social media newsfeeds today as women and men speak up about a time they were sexually harassed or assaulted.
The movement birthed out of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and prove horrifying statistics aren’t just numbers, but neighbors, friends and family.
According to Atlantic Training, about 1 in 3 women between the ages or 18-34 has been sexually harassed at work, and 81 percent of women have been verbally sexually harassed (jokes, name-calling and so on).
Lest you think the church is immune to the problems of the secular world, take a look at the reality of some of today’s prominent Christian women:
An article in Vice even claims that the church fosters this kind of harassment and abuse.
Author James Nolan writes:
In reality, “religion” is a generalized term. Better to specify what kind of religion—or, better still, what kind of culture—fosters it, and how there are varying degrees. Janet Heimlich, one of the world’s foremost authors on the topic and writer of the bookBreaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment, says children are more vulnerable to abuse and neglect if they live in religious authoritarian cultures.
“There are three perfect-storm factors that identify a religious culture or community as authoritarian: One, the culture has a strict, social hierarchy. Two, the culture is fearful. And three, the culture is separatist,” she told the Huffington Post in 2011. “The more intense these three factors are—the more authoritarian the culture is – the more likely children will be harmed.” …
“Part of what has allowed abuses to continue unabated so long in very large religious institutions, such as the Methodist Church and others, is the power they have over congregants,” Heimlich told me. “They have the power to not only convince them they should not report abuses to outside authorities, but to tithe [give money]. These institutions also have power over politicians, who can be lobbied to keep statutes of limitations short, which, of course, benefits the institutions financially and keeps cases of abuse hidden from the public eye because survivors don’t get their day in court.”
With high-profile cases of Christians suffering sexual indiscretion, it can be difficult to disagree with Heimlich’s thoughts.
Evangelical author and professor Karen Swallow Prior summarizes the pervasiveness of the problem like this:
One expert estimates that between 1 percent and 5 percent of the population molest children. This means that if you know 100 adults, chances are good that at least one of them is a child molester. Maybe more. There is no evidence to suggest that the church population differs significantly in reflecting the general population.
Of course, accepting the commonness of the problem does not mean accepting the problem. It is with sexual abuse as it is with a dog’s jumping: it should be neither shocking nor tolerated.
Nor does opening our eyes to the problem mean we should establish a battery of fear-based rules and regulations for young people and for those that serve them. Rather, we must be fiercely communicative, open, vigilant and wise. We need to understand the fact that abusers, potential abusers and their victims are all around us. There is no need to adopt a culture of fear, suspecting anyone whose hand we shake at Sunday morning worship is a thief—but we don’t leave our wallets unattended in the robe room either.
So what’s the church to do?
Jessilyn Justice is the director of online news for Charisma. Born and raised in a pastor’s family in Alabama, she attended Lee University and the Washington Journalism Center. She’s passionate about sharing God’s goodness through storytelling. Tell her what you think of this story on Twitter @jessilynjustice.
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Hybels announced last week he will step down from the top post at his church in October 2018. Executive pastor Heather Larson and teaching pastor Steve Carter will become the lead pastors of the church.
With the change, Willow Creek will become one of the largest churches in America with a woman in the lead pastor position. The church will also be the only major evangelical megachurch with male-female lead pastors who aren’t married.
“When we saw this shaping up, we had to ask ourselves, ‘Can our congregation have a lead pastor that’s a woman?’” Hybels said. “And because this is a deeply held value in our church, we said, ‘No problem.’”
Willow Creek was founded in 1975 and has grown to become one of the 10 biggest megachurches in the country.
“We know that no one person can replace Bill,” Larson said in an interview on the Unseminary podcast last year. “That has led Willow to talk about moving to more of a team approach in leading the church in the future and what that might look like.”
According to Barna’s 2017 State of Pastors report, the number of female pastors overall has tripled in the past 25 years to about 9 percent of all Protestant pastors in America.
The study also showed that only about a third of nondenominational churches have women in senior or preaching pastor roles.
“This is a significant move for not only Willow Creek Church, but also for the greater evangelical movement,” said Tara Beth Leach, who became the first female senior pastor at First Church of the Nazarene of Pasadena last year. “Bill Hybels and Willow Creek have made a move that no church of its size has done before, and I hope that moves like this will have a ripple effect across all of evangelicalism.”
Photo courtesy: Facebook/Willow Creek Community Church
(Photo: Courtesy of Harvest America)Evangelist Greg Laurie shares the gospel at the Harvest America event at the University of Phoenix stadium in Phoenix, Arizona on June 11, 2017.
Megachurch pastor Greg Laurie looked back at a controversial statement made by British rock band The Beatles in 1966 when they suggested they are bigger than Jesus Christ, by pointing out that the band has long since disbanded now, while Christ is still the most popular figure in the world.
Laurie reminded readers on Facebook Saturday of 1966 comments by John Lennon in an interview with the Evening Standard, where the music legend said:
“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now: I don’t know which will go first — rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.”
Lennon’s comments stirred outrage when they were picked up in the U.S., with promoters on the verge of canceling concert dates due to the controversy that ensued.
In a later interview, Lennon tried to add context to his initial statement, by suggesting that it was not a good thing that people were becoming more interested in other things than Jesus.
“I’m not saying that we’re better or greater or comparing us with Jesus, as a person, or God as a thing, or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it was wrong, and now there’s all this,” he said, adding that he’s not “anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion.”
As Catholic Herald pointed out in a 2010 article, members of The Beatles held various religious beliefs, and several of their songs used Christian imagery and motifs.
Laurie, whose comments were also published in his weekly column at World Net Daily, pointed out that the Beatles have long since broken up, however, while Jesus is now “more popular than ever.”
“Jesus was popular in the first century as well, especially after he raised Lazarus from the dead. The name of Jesus was on everyone’s lips. Wherever he went, crowds of people thronged him,” the Harvest Christian Fellowship pastor wrote.
“Matthew 12 says that large crowds gathered to him, so he got into a boat and sat down because the crowd was standing on the beach. In effect, he needed a floating pulpit to get a little distance from the crowd. We read in Luke 12 that so many thousands of people gathered to hear Jesus that they were stepping on each other.”
The evangelist noted that Americans are living in a time in which “a lot of monuments are being torn down.”
“But this is one monument that never will be torn down. It’s memorialized in time by Jesus himself. Jesus said that wherever the gospel is preached, the story of what this woman did would be told. This was a big deal to Jesus, and therefore it should be a big deal to us,” he added.
Laurie most recently teamed up with Christian filmmakers the Erwin Brothers to release the story of American icon Steve McQueen and his journey to Christian faith on the big screen.
“In a significant turn toward the end of his life, ironically, just before he found out that he had cancer and while still the top movie star on earth, Steve did something that showed me that he really was ‘the coolest of them all.’ He put his faith in God and became a believer in Jesus Christ,” Laurie told The Christian Post about McQueen.
Francis drew a standing ovation on Monday at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, where he marked the UN’s World Food Day by calling for governments to work together to tackle the interconnected problems of hunger, global warming and migration.
He cited the Paris climate accord, in which governments committed to capping heat-trapping emissions, as an example of taking action to fight global warming based on scientific evidence.
But in what appeared to be a dig at the United States, which has announced it is withdrawing from the accord, Francis lamented that “unfortunately some are distancing themselves from it”.
Francis said negligence and greed over the world’s limited resources are harming the planet and its most vulnerable people, forcing many to abandon their homes in search of work and food.
“We are called to propose a change in lifestyle and the use of resources,” Francis told the audience, which included agriculture ministers from the Group of Seven nations.
“We cannot make do by saying ‘someone else will do it’.”
Last month, the UN reported that the number of chronically hungry people in the world was rising again after a decade of declines thanks to prolonged conflicts and climate change-related floods and droughts.
While the 815 million chronically undernourished people last year is still below the 900 million registered in 2000, the UN warned the increase “is cause for great concern”.
Francis said the answer was not to reduce the world’s population but rather to better manage the planet’s abundant resources and prevent waste.
Francis called the population control argument, which the Catholic Church has long opposed, a “false solution”.
Rather, he called for a new model of international cooperation that incorporates love, fraternity and solidarity into responding to the needs of the poorest.
Francis said it was not enough to respond with pity, “because pity is limited to emergency aid”.
Love, he said, “inspires justice and is essential to bring about a just social order”.
In a tangible sign of his message, Francis’ gift to the UN food agency to commemorate his visit was a marble sculpture of Alan, the toddler who washed up on a Turkish beach in October 2015.
The sculpture, which features a wailing angel over the little boy’s corpse, symbolises the tragedy of migration, the Vatican said.
In my new book, God and Donald Trump, I document the way four modern-day prophets prophesied ahead of the election that Donald Trump would win. Right up to Election Day, however, popular opinion had it that he would lose big to Hillary Clinton. Yet, he won! The prophets were right.
As I wrote the book, I interviewed numerous people and recorded six of these interviews so I could transcribe them. I also realized I could use them as podcasts to give behind-the-scenes information about how I put the book together.
My first interview was with Chuck Pierce, who prophesied in 2008 that God would play a “trump card,” and how he began to understand that God was referring to Donald Trump. The prophetic aspect in what God is doing is not usually part of our public discourse. I believe my book makes an appeal to the reader that God is involved in the affairs of man, including the election of our president.
Chuck Pierce is not active politically, but he is active in intercession. When people attacked him for prophesying that Trump would win, he said he was merely speaking as an oracle of the Lord—which is what a true prophet is supposed to do.
Please take time to listen to the podcast to get much more detail from Chuck Pierce himself. He emphasizes what God is doing, especially His covenant with Israel, which he believes is key for the future of American and for Trump’s presidency.
He also tells a story that may have never been reported: a “decree” made by Vice President Pence at the White House in May about a covenant between Israel and the United States.
I encourage you to download a sample chapter of the book by clicking here. See our exciting video trailer about the book. I hope it makes you want to purchase it, and I encourage you to preorder it online at either at Amazon.com, ChristianBookDistributors.com or BarnesandNoble.com. Of course, you can also order through a local Christian bookstore. These advance sales will help boost the numbers to qualify the book for some of the literary best-seller lists.
The website also has some memes you can share on social media if you’d like to help us get out the word about God and Donald Trump.
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BBC News reports that the massive bombing occurred in a busy part of Mogadishu, the country’s capital. No group has yet taken responsibility for the attack, although the al-Shabaab terrorist group is known for targeting the region.
Only 111 of the dead have been identified by family members. One hundred sixty-five others will be given a national mass funeral and buried by the government.
Heartbreaking stories have been emerging from Somalia in the wake of the bombing. One victim, Maryam Abdullahi, had been in medical school and was due to graduate the day after the bombing took place.
Maryam’s father had flown to Mogadishu to celebrate her graduation, but instead ended up mourning her death.
“The family is so shocked, especially our father who travelled all the way from London to attend her graduation, but instead he attended her burial,” said Maryam’s sister, Anfa’a.
Witnesses and survivors of the attack say it was unlike anything they’ve ever seen. Local resident Muhidin Ali said it was “the biggest blast I have ever witnessed, it destroyed the whole area.”
“What happened yesterday was incredible, I have never seen such a thing before, and countless people lost their lives. Corpses were burned beyond recognition,” added Mohamed Yusuf Hassan, the director of the Madina Hospital in Mogadishu.
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