The Taliban freed the seven remaining South Korean missionaries it was holding hostage in Afghanistan this evening, The New York Times reports.

The freeing marks the end of a six-week hostage situation, after 23 church volunteers were abducted in July while traveling in Afghanistan on a medical-aid trip.

"After brokering a deal in face-to-face negotiations with a South Korean delegation on Tuesday, the Taliban freed 12 hostages on Wednesday. All 19 of the freed hostages are expected to fly back to South Korea together in the ne[x]t several days," the Times reports.

Shortly after taking the hostages, the Taliban killed two men and released two women earlier this month.

The Korea Times reports that the government will seeks compensation from the church because the costs were covered by taxpayers' money.

"This is the first time for the government to seek compensation from any organization in Korea for freeing hostages," the newspaper said.

South Korea agreed to withdraw its 200 troops in Afghanistan before year's end and vowed to prevent missionaries traveling to the country.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told the Associated Press that he plans to abduct more foreigners, reinforcing fears that South Korea's decision to negotiate directly with the militants would create more hostage situations.

"We will do the same thing with the other allies in Afghanistan, because we found this way to be successful," he told the Associated Press via cell phone from an undisclosed location.
While politicians around the world fear that South Korea's deal could set a precedent for future Taliban action, religious leaders are discussing how this might affect short-term missions.

The Taliban is apparently releasing the South Korean Christian aid workers a few at a time. The Associated Press reports:

The first group of three women were released in the village of Qala-e-Kazi. Several hours later, four women and one man were released in a desert close to Shah Baz, said the reporter, who witnessed both hand-overs. None of the eight said anything to reporters.

It is remarkable that the Taliban agreed to terms that require no additional effort by anyone. (There are no news reports of any ransom being paid.) It's almost a happy ending. But the kidnappers have killed two of the Christian aid workers to prove they were serious about their demand for a prisoner exchange.

So is the freeing of the hostages today a testimony to the power of face-to-face negotiations with terrorists? Or is it testimony the power of not negotiating with them? Both forces were at play here: The Korean government held the talks, but had no power to meet the Taliban demands. Those who could release military prisoners -- the U.S. and Afghanistan governments -- refused to consider the possibility. It looks to me like this resolution came about precisely because the South Korean government was talking face-to-face (giving the Taliban something they wanted even more than a prisoner exchange: an air of legitimacy) and because the South Koreans couldn't really do anything.

The other key factor in the freeing of the hostages was internal division within the Taliban. There were many within the group, as well as from key Islamic leaders outside the group, who criticized the kidnapping of women.

With the new Creation Museum, which teaches a young earth, drawing tens of thousands of visitors, scientists who hold to Darwinism may have a public-relations answer. According to an article in today's Chicago Tribune, the 3.2-million-year-old bones of "Lucy," a small, apelike creature believed to be an evolutionary presursor to human beings, will go on a six-year museum tour, beginning this week. The exhibit, called "The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia," opens on Friday at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

But some paleontologists aren't too happy about the bones being transported out of Ethiopia, where they were discovered. They worry that the bones might be damaged and that they will be unavalable for further study while on tour. But not all think that way:

Donald Johanson, the paleoanthropologist who found Lucy in 1974, said her exhibition should have important payoffs in teaching children and adults about science.

"Seeing the original Lucy will surely heighten public awareness of human-origins studies particularly at a time when the validity of evolution has come under fire in our schools," said Johanson, now the director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, where he continues to do research but also has become a popular educator on human evolution through books and lectures.

"A broader exposure of Lucy to the public does have great educational value," he said.

It should be interesting to see what the interest in Lucy is, given that according to opinion polls roughly half of the American public has expressed serious reservations about the theory of evolution, which nonetheless has enjoyed almost unquestioned hegemony in academia and the mainstream media. Perhaps one explanation for the throngs at the Creation Museum is that there are so few politically correct alternatives for people who question the evolutionary metanarrative, which usually excludes God.

South Korean presidential spokesman Cheon Ho-sun said the Taliban will release 19 Christian aid workers "on the condition that South Korea withdraws troops by the end of year and South Korea suspends missionary work in Afghanistan." However, it sounds unlikely that the Taliban will wait until the end of the year to free the hostages.

The Associated Press notes that the agreement may not be as shocking as it sounds: "South Korea has already said it planned to withdraw its troops by the end of the year. Some 200 South Korean soldiers have been deployed in Afghanistan for reconstruction efforts, not combat." Similarly, the Koreans held by the Taliban probably wouldn't have been affected by a ban on "missionary work in Afghanistan" since the church that sent them has repeatedly insisted that the hostages are aid workers, not missionaries.

The Koreans have been held for a biblically resonant 40 days. Two have been killed, two others released.

The Associated Press will continue publishing updates from Afghanistan and Seoul, and I'll update this blog post as more details are available.

From Vick's statement after pleading guilty: "Dog fighting is a terrible thing, and I did reject it. I'm upset with myself, and, you know, through this situation I found Jesus and asked him for forgiveness and turned my life over to God. And I think that's the right thing to do as of right now."

Last night, KRDO reporter Tak Landrock e-mailed me, assuring me that the fund-raising letter from Ted Haggard (see my previous posts here and here) was genuine. Landrock then e-mailed me again, promising a new article on the subject would be posted overnight.

Here's the link to that new article, entitled "Ted Haggard's Non-Profit Choice Questioned."

One question that has been partially resolved has to do with the legal status of Families with a Mission, the charity that Ted Haggard had designated to receive donated funds. Lawyer Dave Coffman had discovered that the non-profit had been dissolved in February. Haggard-baiting lust columnist Dan Savage posted the relevant documents from the Colorado Secretary of State on the Seattle-based Stranger.com. What was Haggard doing using a defunct charity?

Families with a Mission has told Landrock that it is a bona fide legal entity in Hawaii. And Landrock says that checks out.

Remaining questions? Why did Ted Haggard give a Colorado address for the charity? Haggard didn't respond to questions about that.

And what about Paul Huberty, the registered sex offender who runs the non-profit? Haggard wouldn't comment to Landrock on that subject either.

[New information added at end of post. 8/26/07, 10:10 PM]

Apparently KRDO consumer affairs reporter Tak Landrock has been in ongoing contact with Ted Haggard, and he believed the letter (see my earlier post) was genuine enough to go with the story. And so did experienced reporters at the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Associated Press. (AP religion editor Eric Gorski used to write for the Gazette and was the Denver Post reporter who covered the Haggard scandal as it broke last November. Eric should be close enough to the story to have reliable intuitions.)

Nevertheless, some people posting comments at Colorado Confidential are questioning the letter's authenticity.

Ted Haggard, former megachurch pastor and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, is in the news again - this time asking gifts to provide two years of financial support while he and his wife Gayle study psychology and counseling at the University of Phoenix.

He sent an e-mail to reporter Tak Landrock of ABC affiliate KRDO - and from the way it appeals to "friends like you," it sounds like it was sent to a lot of people. KRDO has posted the letter as a Microsoft Word document, which you can download from here.

The news was also covered by the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Associated Press.

The letter raises three issues:

In an opinion piece this week in National Review Online, S.T. Karnick suggests that two trends may help long-shot Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee actually win the presidency. Huckabee placed second in the recent Iowa straw poll despite barely registering a national blip in the race against better-known and better-financed candidates such as Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

The first trend, Karnick states, is that governors usually win the presidency, while senators (most of the other candidates) usually do not:

The reasons governors beat national politicians are probably fairly simple. They have accomplishments they can cite, have served as CEO of a large government organization (as the U.S. presidency is), and, most importantly, they don’t have a voting record on important and controversial national issues.

Senators, by contrast, don’t have the individual political-administrative accomplishments to which to point, have records dotted with controversial and polarizing votes, and typically have made a lot of enemies on the national level.

This does not bode well for the Democratic triumvirate, each of whom serve or served in the Senate. But of course several of Huckabee's Republican opponents have executive experience. Romney ran Massachusetts as governor, Giuliani ran Gotham as mayor. But Karnick says the hugely important evangelical vote is unlikely to coalesce around either of these two. Giuliani has character problems, while many Bible-believing Christians distrust Romney's Mormon faith (and perhaps his recent reversal on abortion?).

That's where Karnick's second reason comes in. Huckabee is a former Baptist minister, able to connect with evangelicals in a way the other candidates cannot:

A former Baptist minister who served two terms as governor of Arkansas, a state long controlled by Democrats, where he nonetheless enjoyed high approval ratings, Huckabee is hardly more obscure than Bill Clinton was in 1991 (unless you think Clinton’s tenure as leader of the National Governor’s Association made him world-famous). His appeal to evangelicals is a given.

So can Mike Huchabee become a viable presidential candidate and perhaps even steal the Republican nomination? It's an interesting argument. Stranger things have happened, I suppose. No one gave Clinton any hope against Bush I, after all.

If your church's Vacation Bible School leaders need an encouraging pat on the back, or if you want your church to consider investing time and effort in a VBS, an article on today's Taste page of the Wall Street Journal is worth forwarding to them.

Boston-based writer Jennifer Graham offers a positive perspective on the 119-year-old institution. The efforts are clearly evangelistic, but they are low pressure (often just follow-up postcards with participating unchurched families). They are effective (the impetus for 26% of the year 2006 baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention), but they are also expensive (one of the highest-funded programs at Chapel Hill United Methodist Church in Chapel Hill, Tennessee). And it's big business for curriculum publishers, with 3 million participants in Southern Baptist VBS programs alone and another 24,500 United Methodist Churches offering Vacation Bible School.

Thanks to the Journal for an encouraging article.

There has been some online discussion of my earlier blog post on plans to rescue the South Korean Christian aid workers being held hostage by the Taliban. I was particularly troubled by word that the Afghan government wanted to seize the families of Taliban members holding the hostages "as a way of applying pressure." Read that blog post, then read a conversation I've been having with R. Scott Clark, associate pastor of Oceanside United Reformed Church and associate professor of historical and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California. He'll be posting the exchange on his site, The Heidelblog, too.

Illegal immigrant marks year of hiding in church | Arellano not budging: 'If I leave here, it'll be ... legally.' (Today's Chicago Sun-Times)

Immigration activist to leave sanctuary | A woman who has come to personify the struggles of illegal immigrant parents says that for the first time in a year she will venture beyond the walls of the church that has protected her from deportation. (Today's Associated Press)

(For more on Arellano and the recent revival of sanctuary, see "Asylum vs. Assistance.")

A Monday Times of London article is full of revelations that haven't appeared anywhere else -- which may mean the paper has several big scoops, or may mean what they're reporting isn't right at all. But in any case, the paper says:

• The bus driver who was transporting the Koreans when the Taliban attacked has been arrested and is accused of tipping the kidnappers.


• The Korean government has stopped at least two military operations intended to free the Christian aid worker hostages being held hostage by members of the Taliban.


• One of the planned military operations would have involved kidnapping family members of the kidnappers "as a way of applying pressure." An unnamed "senior intelligence source" told the paper, "We know who the Taleban commanders are and we wanted to arrest their families but the Koreans wouldn't let us."

It's hard to imagine, even if kidnapping innocents to secure the release of the aid workers had "worked," that the Christian aid workers would be very pleased. It's hard to imagine Paul writing to the Corinthians, "When persecuted, we persecute; when kidnapped, we kidnap..."

Andrew Paquin is executive director of the 10/10 Project, a Colorado-based international development and advocacy organization focusing on Africa. He was also professor of global studies at Colorado Christian University, and last year was named faculty member of the year. (He also wrote a 2006 op-ed for Christianity Today on Saddleback Church's PEACE plan.)

Monday's Rocky Mountain News reports that CCU fired Paquin "amid concerns that his lessons were too radical and undermined the school's commitment to the free enterprise system." (No one at the school has tenure.)

Amid the debate over Amnesty International's policy on abortion, the "diplomatic editor" for the London Independent notes that the human rights organization was largely inspired to create its policy because of the mass rapes in Darfur, Sudan. But would Amnesty agree with the editor, Anne Penketh, in her jaw-dropping assertion that "To allow the victims of mass rape to give birth is arguably tantamount to complicity in genocide"?

The Reuters story referenced in my last post contained a wild misuse of a common word. Here's the citation:

While the prolific death chamber in the city of Huntsville, where 19 inmates have already been executed by lethal injection in 2007, makes Texas stand out, the state is also starting to follow national trends toward fewer death sentences.

"Prolific death chamber"? "Prolfiic" comes from a Latin word meaning "fruitful," which in turn is based on the Latin word for "offspring." The American Heritage Dictionary offers two definitions for the word:

1. Producing offspring or fruit in great abundance; fertile.
2. Producing abundant works or results: a prolific artist.

The Reuters writer has stood a pro-life word on its head, exchanging the idea of fruitfulness and fertility for sheer efficiency. Christian media critics have often criticized Reuters for uninformed handling of the religion factor in their reporting. But whatever they know or don't know about religion, Reuters editors should know their dictionaries.

On Sunday, the Washington Post published a Reuters story about the number of executions in the state of Texas--now pushing a remarkable 400 since the Supreme Court lifted its ban on capital punishment in 1976. Texas has carried out 398 executions and it has 5 more planned for August. The closest runner up to the Texas numbers is Virginia with 96 executions--only one quarter of the Lone Star State's record.

What was puzzling about the story was the way writer Ed Stoddard tried to link the numbers to religion. Here's how he led off the story:

Texas will almost certainly hit the grim total of 400 executions this month, far ahead of any other state, testament to the influence of the state's conservative evangelical Christians and its cultural mix of Old South and Wild West.

The Washington Post repeated the emphasis by headlining the story, "Religion, Culture Behind Texas Execution Tally."

Whoa there, Podner!

What does religion have to do with it? All Stoddard could come up with was this:

Like his predecessor, Governor Perry is a devout Christian, highlighting one key factor in Texas' enthusiasm for the death penalty that many outsiders find puzzling -- the support it gets from conservative evangelical churches.

This is in line with their emphasis on individuals taking responsibility for their own salvation, and they also find justification in scripture.

"A lot of evangelical Protestants not only believe that capital punishment is permissible but that it is demanded by God. And they see sanction for that in the Old Testament especially," said Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

That's it. Unless you also count the fact the Governor Rick Perry is "a devout Christian." Yup, that explains a lot.

Let's take a look at the factors cited by Stoddard:

In today's Wall Street Journal, reporter Valerie Bauerlein chronicles the effect the sub-prime mortgage bust had on an Atlanta lending company that integrated its loan business with Christian faith. At HomeBanc,

executives opened companywide gatherings and internal meetings with Christian prayers. Every branch office kept a chaplain on call. The company's $365,000-a-year human-resources chief, Dwight "Ike" Reighard, was the founder of a mega-church in an Atlanta suburb. He says he encouraged employees to pray, put others first and become better workers -- and also performed weddings and funerals for employees. "People who never attended church would tell me, you're my pastor," Dr. Reighard said in an interview on Saturday. ...

On Thursday, HomeBanc filed for bankruptcy-court protection. It fired most of its 1,100 employees on Friday and is shuttering its 22 branches and 139 kiosks in real-estate and builders' offices, exiting the mortgage-loan origination business and processing no new loans, including ones in its pipeline.

Some people complained of a cult-like atmosphere at the company. Others said it simply allowed people of faith to integrate their beliefs with the business.

"I don't think they saw God as a magic genie that was going to insulate them from the marketplace," said the Rev. Victor D. Pentz, the senior pastor of Peachtree Presbyterian Church, an 8,500 member congregation whose leadership includes several HomeBanc executives. Instead, he said HomeBanc was "a place where the deeper expressions of their values are welcomed as a part of the mix. People want to relate at a deeper level than 'I stand next to you at the copy machine.' "

Barbara Aiken, a human-relations executive who'd been with HomeBanc for 14 years, says, "Everybody said we were a cult, they said, 'You drink the Kool-Aid.' But I really believe the uprightness with which the company held itself really bothered people."

Still, it wasn't enough faith to save HomeBanc. A few former employees are suing the company for unpaid overtime. Efforts to turn the company around as the mortgage crises deepened earlier this year weren't enough. HomeBanc's stock closed on Friday at 4.8 cents.

I have three comments: Reporter Bauerlein doesn't allege that the company's focus on faith had anything to do with its collapse. After all, the sub-prime lending bust has taken down some of the most successful members of Wall Street. Yet, it does hint at the problems of involving religion too heavily in the workings of a company. Undoubtedly, the 1,100 employees who were laid off, yet prayed together and saw their work as an expression of their faith, feel, at least to some extent, betrayed both by the company and by God.

Second, Bauerlein does write that employees felt that religious devotion was valued over productivity. Third, the article exposes the tendency of religious groups (and not only those) to create insular communities where external forces--like the lending crisis--can be ignored or viewed as an attack to be met with more devotion instead of business strategy.

As the Deomocatic presidential pandering tour continues, the candidates held a forum last night for the party's gay and lesbian lobby (following a debate earlier in the week for leftwing bloggers). At least some of the party's homosexual supporters are, like many prolifers in the Republican Party, feeling used and taken for granted. According to coverage in today's Chicago Tribune:

Perhaps the most personal question of the evening was posed to Sen. Hillary Clinton by [lesbian rock singer Melissa] Etheridge, who told Clinton that she had felt personally hurt and abandoned by the Clintons after President Bill Clinton's inauguration.

"I remember when your husband was elected," Etheridge said, calling it a "hopeful time" for gays and lesbians. But "in the years that followed, our hearts were broken. We were pushed aside. All those great promises that were made to us were broken."

"What," she asked, "are you going to do to be different than that?"

Clinton said she remembered things differently, recalling the political appointments, public remarks and "the ongoing struggle against [conservative Republican House Speaker Newt] Gingrich and the Republican majority."

"We certainly didn't get as much done as I would have liked," Clinton said, "but there was a lot of honest effort."

While I disagree strongly with Etheridge on gay marriage, I feel her pain. As they say in the big city, you're graded not on effort, but on results.

Be that as it may, since the candidates are apparently meeting with every constituent group they can think of in their mad dash for the nomination, here's a modest suggestion: Why not meet with all those pro-life evangelicals who were promised that the Democrats would take their concerns seriously if only they would look beyond party labels and give them a chance?

For some reason, I'm not holding my breath. Here's what Heath Shuler, a new Democratic representative from North Carolina (and a self-professed pro-lifer), told CT recently:

I don't think it's as much about legal measures. Our communities have to do better. Our churches have to do better. I think that's part of growing up in a community like I did. It was a small, very [tightly] knit group, and you knew people in your community and your church whom you could lean on and [who] would help you make these difficult decisions. Everyone wants to talk to us about legislation.

Those are fine sentiments, but Rep. Shuler seems to think he was elected to be a pastor and not a legislator. We don't need more sentiments and promises, but more actions. It's time for some pro-life deeds to back up the pro-life words, Democrats. You received a good number of evangelical votes in the last election, which helped you to regain control of Congress. Don't presume those votes are now yours forever.

"It is the most disappointing field of candidates, looking on both sides of the aisle, that I've seen in my lifetime. I don't remember an election where less people have got me excited from either side."

More here.

Iran's nuclear ambitions are just one aspect of the mullahs' iron-fisted approach to maintaining their power. According to an article in the Monday Wall Street Journal (entitled "Domestic Terror in Iran"), the powers that be that run the Islamic Republic are cracking down against "anti-Islam hooligans," as well as "trade union leaders, student activists, journalists and even mullahs opposed to the regime." After describing the recent public execution of seven men, the author, Amir Tahiri, states:

"The Mashad hangings, broadcast live on local television, are among a series of public executions ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last month as part of a campaign to terrorize an increasingly restive population. Over the past six weeks, at least 118 people have been executed, including four who were stoned to death. According to Saeed Mortazavi, the chief Islamic prosecutor, at least 150 more people, including five women, are scheduled to be hanged or stoned to death in the coming weeks.

"The latest wave of executions is the biggest Iran has suffered in the same time span since 1984, when thousands of opposition prisoners were shot on orders from Ayatollah Khomeini."
...
"The campaign of terror also includes targeted 'disappearances' designed to neutralize trade union leaders, student activists, journalists and even mullahs opposed to the regime. According to the latest tally, more than 30 people have 'disappeared' since the start of the new Iranian year on March 21. To intimidate the population, the authorities also have carried out mass arrests on spurious grounds.

"According to Gen. Ismail Muqaddam, commander of the Islamic Police, a total of 430,000 men and women have been arrested on charges related to drug use since April. A further 4,209 men and women, mostly aged between 15 and 30, have been arrested for 'hooliganism' in Tehran alone. The largest number of arrests, totaling almost a million men and women according to Mr. Muqaddam, were related to the enforcement of the new Islamic Dress Code, passed by the Islamic Majlis (parliament) in May 2006."

According to Iranian Christians International, there are more than 6,700 Muslim converts to Christ among the 65 million people living in Iran (and perhaps 15,000 Iranian Christians of Muslim background worldwide). One wonders whether they are also being caught up in the terror campaign. An estimated seven Christians have been martyred there since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Certainly the entire country can use our prayers.

Today's nonsensical headline from Reuters: "New evangelist leader plans to avoid politics"

Reuters still doesn't get the difference between an evangelical, an evangelist, and a pastor. When the story finally does get around to using the word evangelical, it's to explain, "American evangelical Christians, who number 60 million, believe that many of the country's social ills stem from high divorce rates and teenage pregnancies."

As I finish cleaning out my office, I want to say farewell and thank you to Christianity Today's readers. Today I leave my position as CT associate editor and begin the M.Div. program at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I have loved hearing from you in response to articles I have written and edited. I'm encouraged to hear about all the ways you serve our Lord Jesus Christ and his kingdom.

You won't be completely rid of me, however. I have a few articles planned, and I will be writing a biweekly online opinion roundup of theology in the news. If you have tips about good theological resources and reflection on current events, send them to the CT staff. You might also drop these editors a note of encouragement. They love the Lord and love to help you think biblically about our world. I will miss working with them every day to serve you.

Minneapolis pastor John Piper notes that staff from Bethlehem Baptist Church and Desiring God ministry frequently crossed the bridge that collapsed yesterday. He offers theological reflection in the context of speaking with his young daughter about the tragedy.

Update: Piper's comments are now on YouTube, with footage of the bridge.

Audiobooks are "Reading Lite"? There's a stigma against audiobooks? That's what I learned from The New York Times this morning.

This strikes me as snobbery for snobbery's sake. I don't quite understand the argument against audiobooks, which, unfortunately, the Times doesn't explain. I can't help but wonder: is there really a stigma? I suppose there is now, since The New York Times says there is. But really, if you're going to mock someone in your group for being lowbrow because they listened to He’s Just Not That Into You rather than read a paper copy, you might want to check your irony detector.

I suppose you can "tune out" while listening to audio, but then again, audiobooks work against skimming . (I gave up on the audio version of The Fellowship of the Ring because I decided I wanted the "songs about my sword" and similar sections to pass by a bit faster than the rest of the narrative.) I've benefited greatly from using audio Bibles devotionally, in large part because they focus my attention on the narrative. (Many times I've found myself sitting in the driveway engrossed by the audio version of The Message.)

Maybe the argument is against abridged audiobooks? I can certainly understand the argument there (it's like watching the film version of a book, only without pictures). But unabridged copies of book-group-friendly novels? Which often take much longer to listen to as they would to read? What's the problem?

If you're a CT reader who's eager to stick it to the man by listening to audiobooks, I heartily recommend ChristianAudio.com. There are other good Christian audio outlets, but Christian Audio focuses on thoughtful, intellectually stimulating volumes, many you won't find elsewhere. It also offers several free first chapters and classic titles. (Disclosure of sorts: I think our parent company might have some sort of partnership with this company; I'm recommending it because I actually use it.)

And speaking of ChristianAudio.com, cofounder Dave Bruno has an article on our site today about the Bible and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.