Cornelis Hulsman, editor in chief of the Arab West report and a correspondent for Christianity Today, is currently in Egypt guiding a Dutch tour group.

He reports by mobile phone that many churches located outside the major cities of Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez were able to hold services today, Sunday, Jan. 30. He said church leaders who have spoken to him for the most part are asking Egyptian Christians to stay in their homes and not to take part in the protest movement that is shaking Egypt to its core.

"This is possibly creating a division between Muslims and Christians," he said Sunday morning. He told CT at least one influential Coptic priest has expressed his view that Christians should take part in peaceful protests in order to show solidarity with the thousands of Egyptians who are in the streets protesting for President Mubarak to leave office immediately.

Hulsman said a handful of church leaders have offered special prayers or prayer services in recent days. He said so far there is no evidence that churches in Egypt are being targeted for attacks.

Two of his tour members were escorted personally by Hulsman to the international airport in Cairo. He said the airport itself seemed secure. But in many streets and neighborhoods, there were many unruly youths. He said the situation in many of these communities outside central Cairo seemed very unsafe. "Most people are staying in their homes."

It was unclear if evangelical churches in central Cairo were at risk. Sunday is the normal start to the work week. But he said that all normal activity has come to a halt. His particular tour group is at a seaside resort in Ain Sukhna, where they are safe.

Hulsman has been in contact with Christians in Cairo and they indicate to him that residents, both Christians and Muslims, are protecting churches in urban areas. Coptic leaders have told him that they are not hearing people in the streets shouting out for Islamic fundamentalism, but rather they first and foremost are demanding that President Mubarak step down.

Later on Sunday, Coptic Pope Shenouda spoke on national television and called for the protests to stop.

Posted by Tim Morgan at January 30, 2011 10:22AM

Media attention for Cape Town 2010, the global gathering held October 17-25 by the Lausanne Movement, peaked and faded. But the work of Lausanne continues.

Two key developments just one week apart:

First, on Friday Part II of the Cape Town Commitment will be released. Chris Wright and the Statement Working Group delivered Part I of the Commitment near the end of that international conference. That half-document framed a missional theology in the language of love: love for God, love for the gospel , love for God’s word, etc. The result was a doctrinal statement that moved readers beyond mental assent to passionate action.

But what action? That’s the point of Part II, which was originally promised for November. I’ll analyze Part II on Friday, and Christianity Today will also belatedly post my review of Part I (which was printed in the magazine's December issue but somehow never got posted on its website).

Second, just last Friday we received the official invitation to attend Orlando 2011.

Set for April 4-6 in (you guessed it) Orlando, Florida, this “leadership consultation” focuses on “re-imagining and re-shaping evangelism and missions, transforming the U.S. Church toward loving God and loving our neighbors, and listening to, learning from, and partnering with the global Church in reaching the nations.”

The meeting is convened by the Mission America Coalition (the U.S. Lausanne Committee) along with the National Association of Evangelicals, the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, Campus Crusade for Christ, Vision 360, and Wycliffe Bible Translators.

Attendance at the Cape Town event was severely limited and fine-tuned to maintain balanced participation between various parts of the global Christian community (see "Who Got Invited to Cape Town and Why"). For this North American follow-up meeting there is no need to worry that North Americans will squeeze others out of the conversation, and the invitation list will be broader. Find more information on Orlando 2011 here.

Posted by David Neff at January 26, 2011 10:37AM

The Epoch Times has just published in English the prologue to an article written by the Christian activist Gao Zhisheng in February of 2009. The paper introduced the piece like this:

In 2007 the Chinese civil rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng wrote the article “Dark Night, Dark Hood, and Kidnapping by Dark Mafia,” which gives a harrowing account of 50 days of torture he endured at the hands of Chinese security agents in September, October, and November 2007. The article was released for publication after Gao was once again arrested on Feb. 6, 2009. Gao’s wife, Geng He, recently discovered the prologue to “Dark Night,” the article “Speaking From My Heart.” She has authorized The Epoch Times to publish it for the first time in English.

Toward the beginning of the article, Gao, says,

It is now extremely difficult for me to make my voice heard. Moreover, I am constantly in a situation of peril. For more than three years, the authorities have invested a large amount of manpower, money, as well as employed the most merciless methods, to achieve their goal of silencing me.

The Epoch Times is a multi-language, international media organization. The Times has been publishing as a newspaper in Chinese since May 2000. It was founded in 1999 by supporters of the Falun Gong. The paper is headquartered in New York City and covers stories of general interest, China, and human rights. The newspaper is often critical of the Chinese Communist Party and of the Chinese government.

Posted by Mark Galli at January 14, 2011 8:35PM

Transcripts of an interview with Gao Zhisheng, the Chinese Christian lawyer who has been missing since April 2010, have recently been released by the Associated Press. The summary story was reported in the Washington Post, among other outlets, earlier this week. The story begins:

The police stripped Gao Zhisheng bare and pummeled him with handguns in holsters. For two days and nights, they took turns beating him and did things he refused to describe. When all three officers tired, they bound his arms and legs with plastic bags and threw him to the floor until they caught their breath to resume the abuse.

"That degree of cruelty, there's no way to recount it," the civil rights lawyer said, his normally commanding voice quavering. "For 48 hours my life hung by a thread."

Gao has been described by the New York Times as "one of China’s most high-profile human rights lawyers." He has been disbarred, arrested and tortured by the Chinese secret police for speaking out about human rights abuses in China.

He has defended fellow activists, and religious minorities like Falun Gong and Chinese underground Christians. In his 2006 memoir A China More Just, he described his work and alluded to his Christian faith. He first disappeared in February 2009, resurfaced in March 2010, and has been missing again since April 21, 2010. The AP interview was conducted just before his last disappearance. According the AP story, Gao asked that "his account not be made public unless he went missing again or made it to 'someplace safe' like the United States or Europe."

Christianity Today originally told of his plight here in an extended story by Elissa Cooper.

Posted by Mark Galli at January 14, 2011 8:56AM | Comments (4)

Churches across Australia are joining in to help the state of Queensland recover from massive flooding that has affected 75 percent of the state--an area bigger than Texas and California combined.

In Brisbane, Queensland's capital, estimates suggest that over 30,000 properties and 55,000 miles of road have been damaged. The local campus of the world famous Hillsong Church is an evacuation center for people who have lost their homes or cannot return to them.

"The Brisbane River is running high and fast and is hurtling un-manned boats, furniture, kitchen appliances, vehicles and even concrete city walkways down its path," writes Steve Dixon, the Brisbane campus pastor. "It’s quite a sight."

Not all areas of the city are accessible yet, and other parts of Queensland are still on alert, but Hillsong is preparing volunteer street teams for the clean-up period.

"My prayer is that long after the flood waters recede, local churches throughout affected areas will be safe havens for their community, that their ministers and congregations will be equipped with resources from generous believers across Australia, who rise to meet the need of our brothers and sisters who are suffering," writes Brian Houston, Hillsong Church's senior pastor.

Nationally, the Australian Christian Churches and Anglican Aid are spearheading aid appeals.

So far, the massive flood has claimed 15 lives. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has pledged that the state will bounce back:

“We are Queenslanders," she said. "We are the people they breed tough north of the border. We’re the ones that they knock down, and we get up again. In the coming weeks and months we are going to prove that beyond any doubt.”

Hillsong and other churches plan to hold services as usual on Sunday morning. Yesterday, Dixon tweeted a comment he overheard from a Brisbane resident who had just lost a house:

"Don't cry at the loss of anything that can't cry for you."

Posted by Trevor Persaud at January 13, 2011 4:11PM | Comments (3)

As South Sudanese voters crowded into polling locations all over the world--including eight cities in the United States--a Sudanese congregation which meets at the Evangelical Free Church in Wheaton, Illinois gathered to pray for their homeland and its future.

The pastor, Durmomo Gary, himself a refugee from South Sudan, spoke with CT.

Posted by Trevor Persaud at January 11, 2011 10:22AM

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday a veterans' memorial featuring a 43-foot cross on California's Mount Soledad is unconstitutional.

"The use of such a distinctively Christian symbol to honor all veterans sends a strong message of endorsement and exclusion," wrote Judge M. Margaret McKeown for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"It suggests that the government is so connected to a particular religion that it treats that religion's symbolism as its own, as universal."

The decision that the memorial in La Jolla, Calif., violates the Establishment Clause reverses a lower court decision but does not determine what will happen to the cross that has been the dominant feature of the monument since it was erected in 1913.

"This result does not mean that the memorial could not be modified to pass constitutional muster nor does it mean that no cross can be part of this veterans' memorial," McKeown concluded.

The case has wound through the courts for two decades.

"We are grateful to the Ninth Circuit for its recognition that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment affirms the contribution of diversity in American democracy without pre-eminence to any single religion," said Robert M. Zweiman, past national commander of the Jewish War Veterans of the USA, which worked with the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge the memorial.

Legal groups that supported the memorial, including Liberty Institute and the American Center for Law and Justice, called the decision a "slap in the face" to military veterans.

A second case involving a controversial monument in Southern California also remains in the courts.

Last April, the U.S. Supreme Court permitted a war memorial cross to remain at the Mojave National Preserve and told a lower court to further consider a congressionally approved transfer of the cross to private land.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at January 5, 2011 4:02PM | Comments (8)

The governor of Iran's Tehran province has announced the arrests of a number of Christian missionaries through the nation's state news agency on Tuesday.

It is not entirely clear at this point how many were arrested, where they were from--whether Iranian nationals or from another country--or what organization they represented.

The governor, Morteza Tamaddon, says that they were the leaders of a movement, and promised to move against more members of this "movement," which he calls "deviated" and "corrupt," in the near future.

"Just like the Taliban... who have inserted themselves into Islam like a parasite, they have crafted a movement with Britain's backing in the name of Christianity," Tamaddon said, as quoted in the Agence France-Presse story linked above. He also categorized them as a "conspiracy" and identified them as one of many "fake, deviated and corrupt cults" which "have sharpened their teeth for our beliefs."

UPDATE (4:37 P.M.): According to Sahamnews.org identifies one of the men as Leonard Keshishian, co-author of the book When Heaven Is Silent: Live By Faith, Not By Sight.
Also, elam.com puts the number of Christians arrested at 25.

Posted by Trevor Persaud at January 5, 2011 12:45PM

The governor of Pakistan's largest province was assassinated Tuesday following his support of a pardon for a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy. Media reports are describing his death as the highest-profile killing of a Pakistani leader since Benazir Bhutto was killed three years ago.

One of the governor's security guards told police he was angered by Salman Taseer's support of the woman, according to the Washington Post.

In November Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old Christian mother of five, became the first woman ever sentenced to death under Pakistan's blasphemy law. The police complaint against her said she called the Qur'an "fake," and she made comments about one of Muhammad’s wives and his declining health late in life. Taseer had said that Pakistan's president would pardon her.

"I was under huge pressure sure 2 cow down b4 rightest pressure on blasphemy. Refused. Even if I'm the last man standing," Taseer wrote on Twitter on December 31.

The Associated Press reports that an elite force police commando said he was proud to have killed a blasphemer.

The killing of Punjab province Governor Salman Taseer was the most high-profile assassination of a political figure in Pakistan since former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007, and it rattled a country already dealing with crises ranging from a potential collapse of the government to a virulent Islamist insurgency.

The killing could also add to concerns about inroads by Islamist extremists and fundamentalists into Pakistan's security establishment and represented another blow to the country's Pakistan's embattled secular movement.

...Punjab is a major base and recruiting ground for Pakistan's powerful military and security establishment, which many fear is coming under the increasing influence of religious fundamentalists as Islamist movements have spread in Pakistan.

The New York Times reports on how thousands of Pakistanis rallied December 31 in support of the country’s blasphemy law, which rights groups say has been used to persecute minorities, especially Christians.

The human rights commission has documented scores of cases in which men have been harassed for being Christian or for being members of the Ahmadi sect, a minority group within Islam, and then accused of blasphemy. The mere fact of being a Christian or an Ahmadi in Pakistan makes a person vulnerable to prosecution, the commission says. Often the mere accusation of blasphemy has led to murders, lynchings and false arrests.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at January 4, 2011 10:42AM | Comments (4)