Indian Christians have been accused of offering illegal inducements for conversion. Some followers of Jesus have paid a high price indeed. An account by Anand Mahadevan, however, talks about a heart that has been strangely warmed.

When I was 19, a Christian friend with whom I used to play cricket invited me to his house for prayer. If he had invited me to a pub, or party, I would have gone too. At his home, he and his sister prayed for me. It was a simple yet delightful conversation with God that lasted all of five minutes. I don't remember it verbatim, but they articulated a prayer of blessing on my life, future, career and family. It was a simple affair - no miracles, no angels visiting. All they did was utter a deep human cry out to the creator God and His only son Jesus Christ. When they said Amen, I felt in my heart a desire to follow Jesus.

Update: Thursday, 30 October, 2008; 13:00 cdt

Americans love their new cellphones and laptop computers, and I'm no different. But few of us can truly appreciate our piece of the puzzle in the bigger picture of what we see unfolding in eastern Congo, one of the world's most dysfunctional places.

While Americans have been worrying about their investments, the weak economy, and global economics, the city of Goma, DR Congo, has been sliding toward renewed violence for weeks. Goma is critical in this region of Africa because it has evolved into a staging ground for the United Nations' huge peace-keeping force and for much humanitarian work.

Here's the latest off the news wire:

The rebel general besieging Congo's eastern provincial capital Goma said Thursday he wants direct talks with the government about ending fighting in the region and his objections to a $5 billion deal that gives China access to the country's vast mineral riches in exchange for a railway and highway. Laurent Nkunda told The Associated Press in a telephone interview he also wants the urgent disarmament of a Rwandan Hutu militia that he accuses of preying on his minority Tutsi people.

Granted, Nkunda casts himself in a positive light here. That is but one part of a complex story. This new conflict in eastern Congo has a deeply economic element. Global demand for scarce minerals means certain raw materials that don't require huge mining operations lend themselves toward smuggling.

The concept of "blood diamonds" has captured the imagination of film-makers. It's much harder to address the same issue with coltan and cobalt. But it's true. Coltan is used in cell phones and laptops. Cobalt is extensively used in batteries. In some cases, the products of small-scale, illicit mining operations in eastern Congo and elsewhere end up in manufacturing plants in Asia and the West.

If you are doubtful about this new reality, consider the following development. China has cash in hand seeking trade agreements in an amazing number of African states, in search of oil, minerals, and other natural resources to supply its plants in the manufacture of consumer electronics and many other goods.

Here's what the BBC had to say recently:

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Hu Jia, who was among those named in our map of pre-Olympic arrests in China, was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

The European Parliament gives out the prestigious annual award. Their press release says:

Hu Jia is a prominent human rights activist and dissident in the People's Republic of China. He has embraced a wide range of causes, including environmental issues, HIV/AIDS advocacy and a call for an official enquiry into the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. He has also acted as a coordinator of the 'barefoot lawyers movement'.

Having already been arrested several times, he spoke to MEPs in November 2007 from house arrest via conference call during a public meeting of the EP Human Rights Subcommittee on human rights in China in the run-up to the Olympic Games. As a result he was charged by the authorities with "inciting subversion of state power" and sentenced on 3 April 2008 to three-and-a-half years in jail.

The prize puts China - which is reportedly pretty steamed - in the awkward position of having an internationally recognized lawyer in prison.

The U.S. State Department and other organizations are demanding Hu's release: "We are deeply concerned about the imprisonment of human rights activist Hu Jia and have pressed the Chinese authorities for his immediate release on many occasions and at the highest level," State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told The Age.

Although the European Parliament statement, the Wikipedia page, and reports by The New York Times, BBC, and others don't mention it, Hu is a Christian and one of many Christian human rights activists fighting for human rights in China.

* * *

While one source listed Hu Jia as a Christian, he is a Buddhist, according to China Aid and others. My apologies.

Says David G. Meyers, professor of psychology at Hope College:

Ridiculous, and worse. So say the new atheist books: In God is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens does not mince words, calling religion "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children." Now Bill Maher's movie Religulous lampoons the plausibility and social effects of all religion, ominously concluding that the world will end if religion does not end. But I suggest that social science data point to a different conclusion.

Hat tip: David G. Meyers, Sightings, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Oral Roberts University reached a settlement with two former professors who sued the university a year ago, alleging that they were wrongfully terminated, the Tulsa World reports.

The details of the settlement were confidential. The professors alleged that they were forced out after detailing financial and ethical wrongdoing by Richard Roberts, the school's former president who resigned last year.

Christianity Today has followed the developments at ORU on the higher education section of liveblog, and CT also recently published a lengthy article detailing the school's path to healing.

The university has gone through rapid changes in the past year, including new leadership. Mart Green, whose family founded Hobby Lobby and the Mardel Christian stores chain, was made chairman of the board of trustees. (Clarification) Cameron Strang, founder of Relevant magazine, told me earlier this month that he has also been added to the board of trustees at his alma mater.

For those invested in the evolving origins debate, Beliefnet's Blogalogue today features a lively letter exchange between Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis USA, which opened the Creation Museum last spring, and Karl Giberson, director of the forum on faith and science at Gordon College, and author most recently of Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution.

Of particular interest is how autobiography has in no small way shaped each scientist's convictions. Ham's family was one of few Christians in rural Australia. His father, a school principal, showed a deep commitment to studying Scripture and defending its authority, which Ham likewise sees as part of his mission. Giberson also grew up in a Bible-believing church, in rural New Brunswick, Canada. But he faced something of a crisis of faith upon attending Eastern Nazarene University, whose science and religion faculty did not teach creationism. Giberson eventually embraced theistic evolution, or the view that God creates via natural processes over billions of years.

Both Giberson and Ham have become somewhat predictable go-to men for the sound bites necessary to write origins-related news stories, but their letter exchange nonetheless provides fresh insight:

Karl Giberson on genetics [from "Why I Am Not a Creationist"]:

Recent discoveries in genetics reveal that humans share almost all their genes with primates and other animals. If these genes were all functional and did something meaningful--like make blood clot, or give us two lungs--we could suppose that God used common genetic tools to make different species. But many of these genes are completely nonfunctional and do nothing. Some of them, called pseudogenes, are mutated copies of functioning genes.

They sit irrelevantly beside functioning genes, not needed because their neighbors are doing all the work. There are so many different possibilities for pseudogenes that we would never expect, from a statistical point of view, for different species to have identical pseudogenes, unless they inherited them from a common ancestor. The distribution of these and other genes in different species strongly suggests that these species are related and were not created independently. Why does genetic research point so strongly toward common ancestry if common ancestry is not true?

The evidence from genetics is compelling and trustworthy. We have confidence in genetics to establish biological kinship in legal cases, such as paternity suits; that same genetics now indicates biological kinship among species and we should accept that as well.

Ken Ham on Jesus' interpretation of Genesis [from "The Bible Teaches Creationism"]:

[I]f Genesis (and the rest of the Bible) is a revelation to us from an infinite God, it must be self attesting and self authenticating--and Scripture must interpret Scripture. I checked out the New Testament. Jesus (the Son of God--the Truth--the Word) quoted from Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24 in Matthew 19: 4-6 when discussing the doctrine of marriage. Obviously Jesus (and Paul in Ephesians 5) referred to Genesis as literal history in building the doctrine of marriage being one man and one woman (and the whole understanding of one flesh--Eve came from Adam, as it also states in 1 Corinthians 11:8). . . .

As a Christian, my father had also shown me that the gospel message (the good news of salvation in Christ) was founded on the literal history in Genesis--as Paul in the New Testament makes obvious in passages such as Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. I therefore saw the importance of standing on the authority of God's Word and determined there was a problem with what I was being taught at school--even if at that time I couldn't resolve it back then. I needed to search for answers--and I did. It began a journey that has led me to where I am today.

See more of Christianity Today's science-related coverage here.

Taliban soldiers killed a Christian aid worker from South Africa in a drive-by motorcycle shooting. Gayle Williams, 34, had been working for the UK ministry SERVE Afghanistan for two years and had recently moved to Kabul for safety. One of her colleagues found her on the pavement at 8 this morning.

Zabiullah Mujahed, a Taliban spokesman, told The Times "The reason that we killed her was because she was spreading Christianity." The Taliban took credit publicly, "saying on its Web site that it killed the ?foreign woman' for preaching Christianity in the country and adding that it had been following the woman for some time," CNN reported.

SERVE Afghanistan's chairman of the board, Mike Lyth, emphasized to The Times that the organization is not involved in evangelism. "We have a policy of not (preaching Christianity), so she certainly wasn't involved in that. She was only doing missionary work, if that means living a Christian life and helping disabled people. She spoke only a little Pashtun and Farsi."

The Times reports 28 killings of aid workers, 72 kidnappings, and 146 security incidents involving NGOs this year (the 2007 count was 135 for the whole of last year, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office).

The Guardian also spoke to Lyth about the future of SERVE Afghanistan:

Lyth said the charity would now have to take a "long, hard look" at its operations.

"I personally have been very concerned about security for a long time, but we have tried to take all possible measures to reduce the threat."

"We train our people really carefully. We are in daily touch with the security authorities to find out which roads we shouldn't be on, which parts of the country we shouldn't go to."

"Each time something like this happens, you wonder: do you go on exposing people to unnecessary risk? Yet at the same time, you have got the cry of many, many of the Afghans saying, 'Please help us'. You're caught between a rock and a hard place."

The President signed the Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act on October 8. The legislation aims "to increase the provision of scientifically sound information and support services to patients receiving a positive test diagnosis for Down syndrome or other prenatally diagnosed conditions." These conditions also include dwarfism, spina bifida, and cystic fibrosis.

Recent research has indicated that 90 percent of the unborn children who are diagnosed with Down Syndrome end up as victims of abortion.

The new law aims to reinforce a culture of life by offering information and support to parents who receive a diagnosis before birth and up to a year after birth.

"This is a great victory for the culture of life we should all seek to promote," Sen. Sam Brownback, R.-Kan., said. "[The 90 percent abortion rate for unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome] is much too high and suggests that we as a society are not doing everything we can to protect every human life, at every stage."

For previous CT coverage on disability, see our editorial and columns by me and Al Hsu.

Update: Friday, 17 October 2008, noon, cdt

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If you follow popular culture, you know that the new feature film, "Fireproof," the related book, "Love Dare," and the TV series "Jon & Kate Plus 8," (and the related new Zondervan title), are hot media properties.

This weekend may be the third in the row that 'Fireproof' makes it into the all-important list of Top Ten grossing films. The plot-device book 'Love Dare' also is topping best-seller lists in the how-to and advice categories. "Jon & Kate Plus 8," broadcast on The Learning Channel with new episodes airing on Mondays, is now in its fourth season. The program follows a couple (who are Christians, but don't make a big deal out of it) as they raise 8 kids.

All three of these media entities are crossing beyond the typical boundaries for a low-budget film, yet another marriage-saver title, or a cable TV show. The one thing they seem to have in common is the obvious reality that:

Keeping a marriage healthy in today's America is near impossible.

But why has the Christian angle on traditional marriage captured the popular imagination? This is the bigger question in my mind. Has Christian marriage come full circle and now become cool enough to be counter-pop cultural? What are the other appealing elements, for example, for a program such as "JK+8"?

Here's what my journalist colleague Corrie Cutrer (now a mom of 2 in South Carolina) had to say on the topic of the Gosslin family in particular:

As a sometimes-harried parent of two young children, I was not initially hooked on The Learning Channel's (TLC) reality show Jon & Kate Plus Eight. My sister, also a young mom, had suggested I watch the program, which features the day-to-day chaos of a couple in their early thirties parenting eight (yes, eight) children as the result of fertility treatments: a set of twin girls (age 8) and four-year-old sextuplets (three boys and three girls).

I've been attending the second annual REVEAL Conference at Willow Creek. At the first one, Willow announced that a survey called REVEAL had shown them that a lot of their members had stalled out in their spiritual growth. This was a surprise to Willow leaders, though many long-term critics of Willow shook their heads and said, "We told you so!"

Whatever one's views of seeker-sensitive or market-driven ministry or studies (like REVEAL) that claim to be able to statistically measure spiritual growth, this much is clear: Willow is not the only church that is desperate to learn whether it is being a good and effective servant. The auditorium is filled (I'm guessing 2,000 in attendance) with pastors and staffs from hundreds of churches, and churches of all sizes and shapes.

The conference attendees are mostly white, suburban males, but the presenters have been a healthy mix of suburban/urban, white/black/multicultural churches. Some years ago, Hybels had committed his church to a more multicultural friendly direction, and he has done so, at least from what is presented from the front.

What is more striking, however, is the passion that exudes from the audience as they participate in worship, and applaud or laugh with speakers. This is a leadership group that is desperate to know and follow Jesus, and to lead their congregations and communities into deeper knowledge of God and larger concern for neighbors.

In an age time when many evangelicals seem ambivalent about evangelism, here is a larger group whose hearts burn within them to share the gospel message. In a time when nuanced and sophisticated discussion of hermeneutics abound, here is a group that is more interested in obeying biblical commands we do understand than writing articles on the verses we don't understand. In a time of postmodern doubt and narcissistic self-questioning, here is a group who knows whose they are and what they are called to do in his name.

It's not hard to find things to criticize at a conference based on a survey that traffics in marketing language and the latest business maxims. Really, do we, as one speaker said, "need to completely reinvent spiritual formation" - as if the desert fathers and medieval saints and reformation heroes hadn't already taught about spiritual practices that are supposedly being rediscovered by a contemporary marketing survey?

To argue about method, though, would be to fall into cultural mindset that St. Paul seems to reject: The point is the longing to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. And that longing is palpable here.

(For more of a play-by-play look at this conference, check out the Out of Ur blog from our sister publication, Leadership.)

I had Cherrios (again) for breakfast thanks to General Mills and the Washburn brothers. But tomorrow (October 16) is World Food Day and it's a good time for Christians to think differently about food, food aid, and food ministry.

Globalization has transformed agribusiness, the national and international response to food emergencies, and the way Christians, their churches, and faith-based organizations respond to hungry and needy people.

This post serves as my heads up to CT readers that our November 2008 cover story is titled, "Hunger Isn't History." It will be posted on the CT site within a few days' time. The print edition goes out via USPS this week.

The ongoing global food story truly has crisis proportions. Here are some headline quotes that help to prove my point:

India has the largest number of hungry people in the world, despite the strong economic growth witnessed in recent years. From New Delhi, Anjana Pasricha says a new report shows that India's economic boom has brought new prosperity to its middle class and pulled many out of poverty, but that millions of people n the vast country still struggle on low incomes.

A report by the International Food Policy Research Institute says hunger, across India's 17 major states, ranges from "serious to extremely alarming." Voice of America

ROME (AFP) - The international goal of cutting hunger by half by 2015 appears "even more remote" after 75 million new people joined the ranks of the famished last year, a United Nations agency said Tuesday.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said that high food prices have reversed the gains made towards achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing the proportion of people suffering from hunger by 2015.

Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Rome-based agency, said Wednesday that the number of malnourished people rose from 850 million to 925 million in 2007.

During world food summits held in 1996, 2002 and last June, the international community underscored its desire to reach food security and cut the number of people suffering from chronic hunger in half by 2015. AFP

What is essence of how Christians can think differently about global hunger? This is one of the big questions I thought CT should tackle in addressing the current hunger crisis because we in "The West" cannot provide enough free rice, beans, or wheat and cooking oil to feed the chronically hungry of the world until the kingdom comes.

First....

Religulous, the new anti-religion documentary by TV talker Bill Maher, is neither funny nor insightful, according to Biola's Craig Hazen:

Maher is pitching this film as mavericky - telling the truth about religion that everyone else is afraid to address. But Religulous is nothing more than filthy, nudie, druggie, and obtusey. There is little to laugh at and nothing to learn (except maybe that if you quit being religulous you get to act like Caligulous).

Nor is it all that profitable, grossing just under $4 million so far. This trails by far Fireproof, an unabashedly religious flick that has raked in about $13 million (albeit entering theaters a week earlier).

Now that's funny.

Updated: 10 October 2008

* * *
I was in a newspaper newsroom during the Crash of 1987. Twenty-one years later, I'm still in the news game and now we have the Crash of 2008.

The events of recent weeks are something that your grandchildren may ask you about in 20 years. In recent days, we have seen persistent comparisons to the 1930s. That sent me onto Internet search engines to find out what was going on in American Christianity during the 1930s and the Great Depression.

Here's a glimpse of interpretation, written in 1965:

The depression had a devastating effect on the Churches as well as on the nation. In the optimistic flush of the ?20's many congregations had built new edifices far too large and expensive. When the depression hit, they found themselves unable to pay. Most carried their huge debts; a few rejected their obligation, thus bringing shame on the Christian Church. Colleges and publishing houses, missionary enterprises, and the social work of the Churches were all hard hit by the depression. Many an institution of the Church lost its endowment in the financial crash and had to close or had to drastically cut back its activities.

But the physical effects of the depression were only part of its devastation. It left deep spiritual and mental wounds. It destroyed the utter self-confidence of the ?20's, and it gave birth to a despair and lack of confidence. What an opportunity for the Churches to interpret the meaning of this event! Yet, the Churches profited little in terms of growth. There was no surge of a repentant people to the Churches. There was no appreciable increase in the numbers of churches. There was no great revival which swept the nation.

This narrative was written by Jerald C. Brauer, the late theologian and divinity dean from the University of Chicago. (NYT: Obituary)

Dr. Brauer addresses the issue of the church during the Great Depression in Chapter 17 of his book (online version) Protestantism in America.

Blame is flying as the U.S. economy continues to dive.

Some say the problem is greed among business executives. Others say all Americans are too greedy. Still others are blaming capitalism itself.

Lest we put the blame on ourselves - where at least some of it no doubt belongs - here's another possibility: Feel-good theology is causing the financial crisis.

When belief in God is prevalent in a society, the values of honesty and integrity are more prevalent as well, economists Kevin Kliesen and Frank Schmid noted in a 2004 article echoing German sociologist Max Weber's classic "Protestant work ethic" argument.

But the relationship is complex: A 2003 study from Harvard University's Robert J. Barro and Rachel M. McCleary found that the economy strengthens as belief in heaven or hell increases, but weakens with increased church attendance. And as a country's economy gets stronger, faith in God and interest in religion declines.

This leaves the economy - and religion - in a catch-22. Economies thrive in a semi-religious atmosphere, but are hurt if countries get too religious or too secular. A country needs a strong religious base to build the economy, but as soon as the economy is built up, religious faith drops off.

In case you're wondering, The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life says belief in hell has declined in the last eight years. In 2001, 71 percent of Americans said they believed in hell. Today only 59 percent do. No wonder we're in financial crisis.

Shoring up the numbers of people who believe in hell without actually getting them to increase church attendance is simple enough: get them to watch horror movies, not listen to sermons.

Shoring up the numbers of people who will stay out of hell? That's a different question.

As long expected, the exodus of conservatives from The Episcopal Church is gathering steam. This afternoon, the Diocese of Pittsburgh voted to leave TEC and join the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, based in Argentina.

What does this mean for TEC and global Anglicanism?

My analysis is that the bluff of TEC and its left-leaning House of Bishops is being called. Right now, TEC and a number of dioceses around the nation are so involved in litigation that the situation is moving beyond unmanageable.

Starting another court fight over Pittsburgh's decision would be staggering in its expense. TEC probably is spending more per month on litigation nationwide than at any other time in its history. However, actual figures are being withheld from public scrutiny.

Keep reading for the entire press statement from TEC Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori and from the soon to be recalled Pittsburgh Bishop Duncan: