When musicians Josh and Zac Farro posted their side of the story that led to their departure from the platinum-selling pop-punk band Paramore, they said their decision came in part from a deepening faith divide in the group.

"We were all growing further apart," read the statement the brothers released late last week. "Suddenly the band had split into two sides."

Though not officially a Christian band and never signed with a Christian label, members of Tennessee-based Paramore have often talked about their personal beliefs. They even visited Willow Creek Community Church in 2008 for a brief concert and Q&A session.

"Our faith is very important to us," Josh Farro told the BBC in 2008. "It's obviously going to come out in our music because if someone believes something then their worldview is going to come out in anything they do. But we're not out here to preach to kids, we're out here because we love music."

In 2007, lead singer Hayley Williams agonized in a LiveJournal post about lyrics she wrote which she said used God's name "in vain."

"I'm ashamed to say that, although I'm a believer in Jesus Christ and I claim him as my God, when I wrote those lyrics I wasn't addressing him," Williams wrote. "I might have led some of y'all to believe that I take my saviour lightly, and I don't."

But the Farro brothers say that when they sat down to put together their most recent album, Brand New Eyes, Williams had changed.

"Hayley presented lyrics to us that were really negative and we didn’t agree with. For example, 'the truth never set me free,' which contradicts what the Bible says in John 8:32." ("Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.")

"The truth never set me free / so I did it myself," Williams sings in the Brand New Eyes song "Careful."

The brothers Farro also quoted Amos 3:3 from the New Living Translation: “Can two people walk together without agreeing on the direction?”

Josh Farro seemed content with spiritual message of Brand New Eyes in a 2009 Houston Chronicle interview, but now the brothers are claiming that lead singer Williams' influence over the band forced them to "roll over and let it go."

"We fought her about how her lyrics misrepresented our band and what we stood for, but in the end she got her way," they wrote.

As the former bandmates exchange blog posts and videos, Zac Farro has already joined a new band called Tunnel.

(Photo credit: Flickr, "Paramore-13")

Posted by Trevor Persaud at December 27, 2010 11:45AM | Comments (7)

The announcement by China Aid.org that the Chinese Politburo had decided to unleash a major new assault on China’s house-church community was broadly publicized after the original press release in early December.

But the organization also paid a heavy price.

Its own website was brought down by a concerted attack of hackers within hours of the December 1 starting date of the new Politburo-organized campaign. Within three and a half days, skillful Internet repair operators have restored the China Aid website to normal.

China Aid says it believes the Chinese government might well have been behind the website attack because hundreds of thousands of different computers have to be commanded to overload a website before an attack can be successful, and only a government-sized agency could mobilize such an attack, says a China Aid officer.

A China Aid representative also said that he had heard reports coming from China of close surveillance and investigation of a few Chinese Christian leaders in Beijing, and in Henan Province in the center of China.

“The leaders we spoke to said that something unusual was happening,” he said. One house church pastor from central China said that he had the impression that the authorities were collecting evidence to put him behind bars.

China Aid was especially watching the case of Dr. Fan Yafeng, the head of Christian Human Rights Lawyers of China and of the Shengshan (Holy Mountain) Research Institute. Fan had been detained for nine days, his wife had been interrogated overnight, and items had been removed by authorities from both his home and the research institute.

Although Fan was allowed to go home, he remained under house arrest. Fan was the recipient (in absentia) of the of the 2009 John Leland religious liberty award of the Southern Baptist Convention. He has represented China’s persecuted Christians and campaigned for the concept of constitutional democracy.

Other reports from China were less gloomy.

A source with frequent access to the house church situation in China, who nevertheless did not want to be identified, reported that he had not heard follow-up stories of the crackdown in the nearly three weeks since December 1, when “Operation Deterrence” was formally supposed to have begun.

“Twenty-one days is a long time. I have not been able to identify any impact or any action taken against any house church leaders of group of leaders. I am personally doubtful that any action has taken place.”

There were other reports of some of the original Chinese invitees to the Lausanne conference in Cape Town, South Africa, in October – who had been prevented from traveling to Cape Town -- having been able to travel abroad in the past few days.

China’s annoyance at the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident, but not apparently a Christian, might have lessened since the December 10 Oslo award ceremony.

Attention to the situation of Christians in China, however, is an important part of their ability to operate freely. China Aid credits the media response to their original press release about "Operation Deterrence" with speeding up Dr. Fan's release from police custody.

+ + +

Today, China Aid posted a statement from Fan Yafeng in which he expresses thanksgiving for the prayerful support of the global Christian community. Click here for the statement.

For more from David Aikman, formerly a columnist for Christianity Today, visit his website. -- eds.

Posted by Tim Morgan at December 22, 2010 4:27PM | Comments (6)

Two new surveys that suggest that while most consider Christmas religious, their actions don't follow suit, Cathy Lynn Grossman reports for USA Today.

LifeWay's survey of 2,110 adults found 74% called Christmas "primarily" religious. And a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of 1,000 adults found 51% say, for them, it's "strongly religious," up from 40% in 1989.

But what does "religious" mean? Not so much for a significant number of Americans, the data indicate. Most surveyed said they will give gifts (89%), dine with family or friends (86%), put up a Christmas tree (80%) and play holiday music (79%).

The percentages plummet when it comes to religious activities:

• 58% say they "encourage belief in Jesus Christ as savior."
• 47% attend church Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.
• 34% watch "biblical Christmas movies."
• 28% read or tell the Christmas story from the Bible.

Ed Stetzer has more details on the survey Lifeway just released. In an accompanying story (where our Christianity Today International colleague Drew Dyck is quoted), Grossman writes about how Focus on the Family changed its emphasis on retailers.

Esther Fleece, 28, of Colorado Springs, who works as the link to Millennials for the evangelical Focus on the Family, has many friends less tied to faith.

"Black Friday has become a national holiday, and Christmas is like Valentine's Day with more presents," she says. Rather than hammer retailers for saying, "Happy holidays," Fleece was part of a group of under-30s who persuaded Focus to drop its "Naughty & Nice" list of stores that failed the "Merry Christmas" test. This year, the organization celebrates retailers who give back to their communities.

A few years ago, Religion News Service reported that the war on Christmas was becoming a lucrative fundraising opportunity for different advocacy groups. This year, Focus's Rising Voice website includes a map where stores such as Ten Thousand Villages and Heifer International are recommended by the map's users. The recommendations include "Organic, or Eco-friendly clothing and accessories" and "uplifting impoverished communities in the developing world through efforts in international tourism and trade," rather than Focus's previous emphasis on whether stores use generic phrases like "happy holidays" or "season's greetings."

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at December 20, 2010 11:20AM | Comments (2)

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Irish abortion laws violated the rights of one of three women who sought abortions, according to the Associated Press.

Ireland's constitutional ban on abortion violates pregnant women's right to receive proper medical care in life-threatening cases, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday, harshly criticizing Ireland's long inaction on the issue.

The Strasbourg, France-based court ruled that a pregnant woman fighting cancer should have been allowed to get an abortion in Ireland in 2005 rather than being forced to go to England for the procedure.

The judgment put Ireland under pressure to draft a law extending abortion rights to women whose pregnancies represent a potentially fatal threat to their own health. But Catholic leaders and anti-abortion activists insisted that Ireland had no legal obligation to do anything despite the court ruling.

The BBC and the New York Times also published stories on the decision.

Americans United for Life focused on the larger questions of whether countries could individually decide set their own abortion laws.

Abortion proponents’ efforts to make abortion a “right” in Europe were thwarted today when the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights held that the European Convention on Human Rights contains no “right” to abortion. The Court rightly found that matters relating to abortion should be left to the member states’ own domestic laws.

The Court dismissed two of the plaintiffs’ health-based claims in A, B, C v. Ireland because it found no right had been violated under the Convention. In the remaining woman’s situation, the Court stated that Ireland needs to take steps to better comply with its own domestic laws.

First Things' Joe Carter writes that this could continue a larger debate over whether abortion should be permitted in cases where the life of the mother is in danger.

The problem with the abortion law in Ireland, according to the court, was that while it allowed an exception where there is a “real and substantial risk” to the life of the mother, the Irish government makes it impossible for women to get medical advice or to obtain abortions in such cases. Because doctors and patients run the risk of “serious criminal conviction and imprisonment” if a doctor so much as concludes that abortion is an option because the mother’s health is at risk from pregnancy, it makes the exemption untenable.

The Irish government will likely enact legislation setting out how and in what circumstances women with life-threatening conditions can obtain abortions.

What is most interesting about the decision is that it mainly involves an intramural debate in the antiabortion camp: Are legitimate threats to the life of the mother a valid reason to allow for an abortion?

Reuters' FaithWorld blog includes details on the case.

The court, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, ordered Ireland to pay 15,000 euros ($19,840) in damages to the woman, who was forced to travel to Britain, where the laws are more liberal, to have an abortion. Terminating a pregnancy has long been a fraught issue in Ireland, where some of the toughest abortion laws in Europe allow terminations only when the mother’s life is in danger.

“The Court concluded that neither the medical consultation nor litigation options, relied on by the Irish government, constituted effective and accessible procedures which allowed (her) to establish her right to a lawful abortion in Ireland,” it said a statement on the ruling. Here is a court press release and the full text of the judgment.

Tom Heneghan reported last year on how the case was being described as the European version of Roe v. Wade.

This has been described as “Europe’s Roe v. Wade case” (here and here) because a Court ruling would be an authoritative interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights to which 47 European states are parties and with which they must comply. “Domestic courts have to apply the Convention,” the ECHR’s FAQ says. “Otherwise, the European Court of Human Rights would find against the State in the event of complaints by individuals about failure to protect their rights.”

The BBC has more information on the various abortion laws in European countries.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at December 16, 2010 2:33PM | Comments (5)

C. S. Lewis said that Christianity was about achieving perfection in God, not happiness. Even so, a survey in this month's American Sociological Review (ASR) suggests that a "high rate of life satisfaction" is at least a byproduct of the Christian life.

Researchers Chaeyoon Lim, sociologist at the University of Madison-Wisconsin, and Robert Putnam, author most recently of American Grace and most famously of Bowling Alone, found that people who frequently attend church and other places of worship are happier than those who attend less frequently. Lim and Putman say respondents' happiness comes from building friendships in a close-knit social circle around common religious beliefs — not necessarily from the content of said beliefs. “Our evidence shows that it is not really going to church and listening to sermons or praying that makes people happier, but making church-based friends and building social networks there,” Lim said.

Lim and Putnam surveyed some 3,000 Americans from 2006 to 2007. A majority of participants were evangelical and mainline Protestants and Catholics. About one-third of participants who attend church frequently and have at least 3-5 close friends there said they were "extremely satisfied" with their lives. That percentage jumps to 40 percent for frequent churchgoers who report having 11 or more close friends at church. Tragically, 15 percent of frequent churchgoers reported having not one close friend at church. According to the survey, friendless churchgoers are less happy than those who are not religious and do not attend church at all, as well as those who are very religious but do not attend church.

Other nuggets of interest:

-- 28 percent of people who go to religious services weekly will say they are extremely satisfied with their lives, compared with less than 20 percent of people who never go to such services.

-- People who said they “personally experience the presence of God” and who “personally feel God’s love in life” do not report more happiness than those who do not.

-- If you compare two people with the same number of close friends in life -- both inside the church and out -- those with stronger relationships in church report being happier.

An abstract of the Lim and Putnam's article is posted on ASR's website. For a theological treatment of the topic, look for a review of Ellen Charry's God and the Art of Happiness in the December issue of Christianity Today and on CT's website next week.

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at December 7, 2010 10:50AM | Comments (6)

Lawsuits are breaking out all over Canada's Messianic Jewish ministry community, as one of the largest organizations dedicated to reaching Jewish people for Christ is exchanging legal actions with a man who went to work for another one.

Marcello Araujo is suing Jews For Jesus Canada for wrongful termination. The organization let him go in 2005 for getting married without their counsel or consent, which they say violated the organization's Worker's Covenant. Araujo responds that he never signed the covenant. Jews For Jesus Canada, meanwhile, is suing Araujo right back, saying that when he went to work for another group, Chosen People Ministries Canada, he took a donor's list with him. Araujo counters that he has only contacted donors he personally brought in for his former organization.

According to the National Post, a trial has not been scheduled.

Posted by Trevor Persaud at December 6, 2010 4:17PM | Comments (6)

Frankfurt, Germany -- After police barged into the Busekros family home in Bavaria, the family's 15-year-old daughter, Melissa, was placed in a psychiatric facility, and later long-term foster care.

The police, the girl said, told her she had been brainwashed by her conservative evangelical parents, who home-schooled her. "They never even tested me to know for sure that I had a mental problem," said Busekros, now 19.

The moment Busekros turned 16 and could legally choose where she would live, she slipped through a window at her foster home and returned to her parents.

Earlier this year, Elke Schupp missed a court date to answer charges of home-schooling her two young boys. Later, when a police car with lights flashing pulled up behind her on a German highway, Schupp said, she panicked and slowed down long enough to send her boys running off
into a forest.

When police caught up with them, she said, she lost custody for good.

"I told them I wouldn't home-school again," said Schupp, a nonreligious woman who said she simply wanted to nurture her children on her own, without state interference, "but they don't believe me."

In Germany, home-schooling is a crime so serious that families who ignore the law have been fined into poverty, and parents have served jail time. Some families have staged stand-offs against the police, or hid their children with other families.

The home-schooling movement is a mix of religious conservatives and nonreligious families -- some call themselves "un-schoolers" -- who embrace a barefoot back-to-nature lifestyle that shuns traditional schooling.

Both want the practice legalized, but some religious families worry the movement's anti-establishment wing gives home-schooling a bad name and harms their bid for acceptance.

"If the majority of Germans see these alternative home-schooling families, they wouldn't accept home-schooling," said Uwe Romeike, a conservative Christian who, with his wife, Hannelore, home-schools his five children. "People would think that they are weird, or at least that they look weird."

Earlier this year, the Romeike family was granted political asylum in the U.S. when a federal judge in Tennessee decided that the family was persecuted by the German government for teaching their children at home.

In many ways, the Romeikes fit the standard profile of German home-schoolers: Conservative, evangelical Christian, and opposed to sex education, evolution and fairy tales, which in Germany are often built around witchcraft or paganism.

Germany is one of just a handful of nations that bans home-schooling. While home-schoolers argue about whether the constitution expressly forbids it, a Hitler-era law gave states the right to take custody of children who don't attend school.

For many Germans, going to school is just as much about social integration as it is about education.

"Education is a social process," said Ludwig Unger, a spokesman for the education ministry in Bavaria, Germany's largest state. "In classrooms there are 20 or 30 people, and they come from different families with different cultural and social backgrounds, different religious backgrounds, and they have to learn tolerance. Therefore, it is necessary that they visit school."

Even private religious schools must follow the same state-approved curriculum that is used in public schools. And to a growing number of families, that's unacceptable.

People involved in the movement estimate there are 1,000 children or more who learn at home, and most of those families operate underground.

Each German child is registered with the government at birth, so when the child is nearly 6 years old, school leaders already have a list of children who must enroll.

To avoid getting caught, some families tell school officials they've sent their children to foreign boarding schools, or say the kids are enrolled in distance learning programs. Some families convince local school principals to not report them.

German officials say there are only a few families who home-school, and many are religious radicals, or as Harald Achilles, a spokesman for the education ministry in the central state of Hesse put it, "fundamentalists."

"They don't have tolerance," he said.

But not all home-schoolers choose to break the law for religious reasons. Stephanie Edel, who runs a website for German home-schoolers with her husband Jan, chose home-schooling so she could spend more time with her children and give them a more relaxed learning environment.

"Most parents just say, `My kid doesn't fit there. He needs more ... whatever,"' she said.

Though the movement has matured, with websites, e-mail lists and communal events for home-schooling families, a vast ideological gap persists between Christian and non-Christian families.

Standing barefoot in the center of Stuttgart, 22-year-old Immanuel Wolf handed out leaflets to passersby that listed the names of famous Germans who, like him, had learned at home. Growing up, Wolf said he spent his days bounding through forests and sharing stories with his
grandfather.

"We're not religious," he said. "We just want to be close to the earth. The world is so big, and there is so much you can do. Why spend all day in a classroom?"

Jurgen and Rosemarie Dudek are awaiting possible jail time after being fined and sentenced to three months for home-schooling their seven children, who study at small desks in their rural farmhouse, surrounded by shelves stocked with Bibles and theology texts.

"I'm sure they don't teach you anything about creationism at school, so you are just confronted with evolutionism," said Jonathan Dudek, 18, the oldest of the Dudek children. "From faith you believe in creationism, but it's through home-schooling that you learn there is another opinion, and you learn how to compare these two."

If he'd gone to public school, Jonathan Dudek said, he wouldn't have learned that there was an option other than evolution, and he would have been forced to blindly adopt the teacher's opinion.

"This is about a lifestyle in that we are more than just religious," the father said. "We live with the reality of God. And he has entrusted us with these children. We can't just give them away to a school every day."

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at December 3, 2010 10:49AM | Comments (29)