Leith Anderson, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), will step down as senior pastor of Wooddale Church at the end of this year.

Anderson, who will assume the title of pastor emeritus of the church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, is author of many ministry books, including Leadership That Works and Dying for Change.

Anderson has led the NAE on two separate occasions. He is credited for saving the association from financial ruin during his 2001-2003 interim presidency. He also took over leadership of the organization after former president Ted Haggard resigned in November 2006. He also served as interim president of that Denver Seminary in 1999.

Wooddale, the church that GOP candidate Tim Pawlenty attends, is one of the largest in the Minneapolis area.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at June 29, 2011 5:43PM

Editor's Note: The new Pew survey will be explored further in the August issue of CT.

Are U.S. evangelicals losing their influence on America? A new poll released Wednesday from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life seems to say just that, with the vast majority -- 82 percent -- of U.S. evangelical leaders saying their influence on the country is declining.

At the same time, their counterparts in Africa, Asia and Latin America are far more optimistic.

"There's both a huge optimism gap and a huge influence gap in terms of the way these folks perceive things," said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum.

Researchers surveyed more than 2,000 leaders invited to attend the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town, South Africa, last year.

The Rev. S. Douglas Birdsall, executive chair of the Lausanne Movement, which worked with Pew on the survey, said the U.S. pessimism is rooted in a changed culture where Billy Graham has retreated from public life and government-sponsored prayer has been banned from public schools for more than a generation.

"There was a time when there was a Ten Commandments in every classroom, there were prayers in public places," he said. "So having gone from that position of considerable influence, even though we might actually have more influence than churches in ... other parts of the world, the sense is that it's slipping from our hands."

The perception of declining influence comes as the nation has become both more pluralistic and more secular. The vast majority of U.S. leaders surveyed -- 92 percent -- called secularism a major threat to evangelical Christianity.

Some evangelical denominations are starting to acknowledge pluralism in hopes of increasing their numbers. The Southern Baptist Convention, which drew the smallest attendance since World War II at a recent meeting in Phoenix, and is grappling with declining baptism rates, has launched a plan to diversify its leadership.

Researchers also found that evangelicals are far more pessimistic than their Global South counterparts about the current and future state of evangelicalism.

About half (53 percent ) of U.S. leaders said the state of evangelicalism is worse than it was five years ago, and nearly as many (48 percent) said they expect it to grow worse in the next five years.

Birdsall is meeting with 150 Lausanne Movement leaders in Boston this week to map out steps for the next decade. He said topics will include a focus on the authenticity and integrity of evangelicals' image, which sometimes has been besmirched by the moral failures of its leaders and overly influenced by a consumer-oriented culture.

"What can happen is that the minister becomes the communications marketing guru who knows how to appeal to various markets and so you attract people," he said. "When you do that, you lose your prophetic voice of what it means to challenge people to be in the world but not of the world."

Randall Balmer, a historian of American evangelicals at Barnard College, said leaders of the religious right -- from the late Rev. Jerry Falwell to broadcaster Pat Robertson -- promoted a "cult of victimization among evangelicals" that may have worked at the voting booth but hurt them in the larger culture.

"I think there is some waning of cultural influence," he said, pointing to the politicizing of the movement as the reason for both greater visibility but also cultural decline.

"Like it or not, when you become politically active, you become associated with the politicians you support," Balmer said, alluding to many evangelicals' embrace of the GOP. "Once you begin to covet political power and influence, you lose the prophetic voice."

Researchers found that just 18 percent of U.S. Lausanne representatives surveyed said religious leaders should stay out of political issues, compared to 78 percent who said they should express their political views.

Historian Mark Noll said there was a certain level of influence that was taken for granted by evangelicals in past decades, with Graham's prominence and fewer concerns about political involvement.

"Big churches in medium, small places knew that they were important," said Noll, a historian of American religion at the University of Notre Dame. "And now big churches in big and medium and small places, they may not have that same sense."

He said successful congregations and ministries continue to thrive in parts of the country, especially locally, but "that local and individual strength doesn't show up on the evening news."

Birdsall agreed evangelical influence may have changed, but said it still exists, although perhaps in a different form.

"Though we are losing influence, it doesn't mean that we are pessimistic about our churches and their role in society," he said.

"They're having influence in homes. They're having influence in caring for those who are marginalized, those who are the poor, the oppressed. It may not be as public."

U.S. evangelical leaders' sense of influence and optimism contrasted sharply with leaders of the Global South in a number of ways:

-- Evangelicals in your country losing influence: U.S. 82 percent; Global South 39 percent.

-- State of evangelicalism worse today than five years ago: U.S. 53 percent, Global South 27 percent.

-- State of evangelicalism in your country will be worse in five years: U.S 48 percent; Global South 12 percent.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at June 23, 2011 9:04AM | Comments (8)

Even before the Southern Baptist Convention elected the Rev. Fred Luter to national office, there was already widespread speculation that Luter is poised to become the denomination’s first African-American president.

Representatives of 16 million Southern Baptists overwhelmingly elected Luter first vice president on June 14 at their annual meeting in Phoenix.

By the time Baptists gather again next summer in Luter’s backyard, many expect the pastor of this city’s 5,000-member Franklin Avenue Baptist Church — one of the largest Southern Baptist churches in the state — to clinch the top post.

“Many of us are thinking this is the first step toward him being elected president next year,” said Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., who nominated Luter for the vice presidency.

“I haven’t talked to a person who hasn’t affirmed that, including the present president, Bryant Wright, the past president, Frank Page” and others, Akin said. “There’s tremendous interest and excitement about that.”

Luter’s election comes at a moment that the nation’s largest Protestant denomination confronts evidence that it has plateaued in numbers — even declined slightly.

Moreover, some leaders of the predominantly white, socially conservative church say they are concerned that their ranks — and especially their leaders — do not look like the nation as a whole.

In recent decades, the convention has passed 11 resolutions seeking “greater ethnic participation,” including a 1995 resolution apologizing for its past defense of slavery, but church leaders deemed that insufficient.

“There’s a sense that we’re behind the curve in the SBC, that we’re not really representative of our constituency at the level of leadership. That we need to be moving forward with more diversity,” said the Rev. David Crosby of First Baptist Church in New Orleans.

Convention delegates, or “messengers,” approved a plan in Phoenix to vigorously reach out to minorities to incorporate them in meaningful leadership positions.

“We’re becoming more aware of the fact we should strive to make church on earth look like church in heaven,” Akin said in an interview.

Luter’s allies portray him as the right man for the job next year, regardless of the denomination’s explicit desire to incorporate more people of color into its leadership ranks.

“I think Fred can be elected on merit, regardless of race or color,” Akin said. “But he gives us opportunity to make a proactive statement, to say something about who we want to be.”

Luter, a gifted preacher, has traveled widely in Southern Baptist circles for almost 20 years and built a solid reputation all across the convention, Crosby said.

In 2001, the last time Southern Baptists convened in New Orleans, he was given a plum preaching slot and delivered a tour-de-force sermon that roused 10,000 messengers to their feet.
Luter took over the Franklin Avenue pulpit in 1986. Formerly a white church whose congregation had left for the suburbs, it had only about 60 members and was near death.

At the time, Luter was a commodities clerk, not even formally ordained. His preaching experience was in borrowed churches and street corners, including his native Lower 9th Ward. Luter was ordained and installed as pastor on the same day, he said.

The congregation grew. And although it became predominantly black, like its changing neighborhood, it kept its Southern Baptist affiliation.

Franklin Avenue numbered about 7,000 members just before Hurricane Katrina destroyed it in 2005.

In the following months, evangelical pastors around the state sent money and volunteers to help Franklin Avenue get back on its feet. It currently claims about 4,900 members, according to the Louisiana Baptist Convention.

“He’s known not only as a great preacher, but an effective pastor. He’s worked hard and people love him. He’s a model for pastors all over the convention,” Crosby said.

Meantime, Luter said he is overwhelmed by the sudden attention.

Although a movement to draft him for the presidency has quietly circulated for months, he said he was approached about the vice presidency only in the past two weeks.

With the elevation to that office, he said, people are congratulating him as if the presidency were a foregone conclusion. “My head’s spinning,” he said.

“I haven’t decided what to do, but every step I take people are telling me, ‘It’s your time,”‘ particularly with next year’s meeting scheduled for New Orleans, Luter said.

His congregation is in the midst of a major capital campaign to build a new church in eastern New Orleans. He said he would decide whether to seek the presidency after consulting with his church and other leaders.

Bruce Nolan writes for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. Adelle M. Banks contributed to this report.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at June 20, 2011 4:52PM | Comments (2)

Jack Van Impe, a popular End Times broadcaster, has ended his decades-long run on Trinity Broadcasting Network after a dispute over naming ministers that he accuses of mixing Christian and Muslim beliefs.

Earlier this month, Van Impe named California megachurch founders Rick Warren and Robert H. Schuller as proponents of “Chrislam,” which he defined as “a uniting of Christianity with Islam.” TBN pulled the episode before a repeat broadcast could air.

Michigan-based Jack Van Impe Ministries said its board of directors decided unanimously Thursday (June 17) to no longer work with TBN.

“We would not be able to minister effectively if we had to look over our shoulder wondering if a program was going to be censored because of mentioning a name,” said Ken Vancil, executive director of the ministry, in a statement.

TBN president and founder Paul Crouch expressed disappointment with the ministry’s decision.
“Although I understand, and actually agree with, your position that you ‘will not allow anyone to tell me what I can and cannot preach,’ I trust you understand that TBN takes the same position with its broadcast air time as well,” Crouch wrote in a letter to Van Impe.

Van Impe’s program cited Warren’s speech to an Islamic conference in Washington in 2009 and Schuller’s keynote address at an interfaith conference called “A Common Word” in 2008.
Van Impe and his co-host wife, Rexella, also claimed Warren said churches can attract new believers by taking crosses down from inside and outside their buildings.

In a June 8 tweet, Warren said just the opposite: “If you remove the cross from the church, it’s no longer the church. Just a social club.”

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at June 20, 2011 4:49PM | Comments (83)

Christian author Eric Metaxas says the new book Go the [Expletive] to Sleep (Akashic Books) released earlier this week is a parody of his own bedtime book It’s Time to Sleep, My Love.

The profanity-laden children’s book, written by Adam Mansbach and illustrated by Ricardo Cortés, has lept to the top of bestseller lists, but Metaxas is confused why the book doesn't mention his earlier rendition. “As soon as I saw it, I thought ‘Oh my gosh, they’re parodying my book,'” he told me."I’m kidding when I ask, ‘Should I sue?’ but for some reason, the publishers are not letting on that it’s a parody."

Before it was published Tuesday, the parody saw advance sales of more 100,000 copies printed more than 400,000, according to Reuters. The movie rights were purchased by Fox 2000.

It’s Time to Sleep, My Love (Feiwel and Friends) features a lullaby by Eric Metaxas and illustrations by Nancy Tillman with 175,000 copies in its first printing in 2008. Tillman’s art and Cortés’s art both depict sleeping tigers.

Lines from Time to Sleep, My Love include “It’s time to sleep, / it’s time to sleep, / The fishes croon in waters deep. / The songbirds sing in trees above, / It’s time to sleep, my love, my love.” Lines from Go the [Expletive] to Sleep include “The windows are dark n the town, child. / The whales huddle down in the deep. / I’ll read you one very last book if you swear / You’ll go the [expletive] to sleep.”

"I’m able to appreciate how funny and well done this book is, but on the other hand, it’s saddening to me that this kind of language has found itself in the mainstream that it becomes a number one bestseller," he said.

Metaxas, who used to write for Veggie Tales, says that he knows the context makes it humorous and speaks to the frustration many parents have with their children's sleeping habits but is concerned about the language.

"It’s not a hill worth dying on, and I’m not speaking out harshly and denouncing it, but it’s a sad cultural marker for me," he said about the title. "I’m fully aware of how even saying that puts you at risk of being thought prudish. It's like reading a joke on the internet. You never look at it again because it’s not worth it."

Although his children's book is not a Christian book per se, Metaxas is a well-known Christian author. He says his Bonhoeffer biography has sold more than 200,000 copies and will be translated into German later this year.

Ellen Painter Dollar wrote about lessons from the expletive-laced book for our women's blog.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at June 16, 2011 9:22AM | Comments (9)

Southern Baptists on Wednesday called hell an "eternal, conscious punishment" for those who do not accept Jesus, rebutting a controversial book from Michigan pastor Rob Bell that questions traditional views of hell.

Citing Bell's book "Love Wins," the resolution urges Southern Baptists "to proclaim faithfully the depth and gravity of sin against a holy God, the reality of hell, and the salvation of sinners by God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, to the glory of God alone."
Several leaders during the Baptists' two-day meeting in Phoenix coupled warnings about hell with pleas for evangelism -- especially in areas where there are no churches or missionaries.

"Is hell real? Is hell forever? Did God really say sinners would perish in eternal torment forever and ever?" asked pastor and author David Platt of Birmingham, Ala. "Oh, readers of Rob Bell and others like him, listen very carefully be very cautious, when anyone says, `Did God
really say this?"'

Bell's book, released in March, criticizes the "misguided" view that "select Christians" will live forever in heaven while the rest of humanity will suffer eternal torment in a punishing hell.

Earlier this year, the Southern Baptist-affiliated Lifeway Christian Stores quietly removed warning labels from certain books -- including Bell's -- that "could be considered inconsistent with historical evangelical theology."

"At the center of the Christian tradition since the first church has been the insistence that ... hell is not forever, and love, in the end, wins," Bell wrote in "Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Has Ever Lived."

Southern Baptist Convention President Bryant Wright prayed that Southern Baptists would take to heart the statement they passed on hell.

"Father, because the reality of hell is so real, the permanent separation from you is so real, and our hours here on this earth are so limited, we pray that you will give us a fresh sense of conviction of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ," he prayed right after the resolution was adopted.

On Tuesday, Baptists elected a black pastor from New Orleans as first vice president, the highest office in the denomination ever held by a black man. Pastor Fred Luter of New Orleans is already being talked about as a prime candidate for SBC president next year.

"It's a great feeling," Luter said in an interview Wednesday, comparing his election to the accolades he received when he was tapped as the first African-American to give the convention sermon in 2001.

The mostly white denomination, which traces its roots to Civil War-era defense of slavery, voted Tuesday on specific measures to increase the ethnic diversity of its top leadership -- which Luter cited as a genuine shift.

"I think the change is that the denomination is purposely at the point where we know we have to open up the doors for more ethnics to be involved in leadership roles in the convention," he said.

As for a possible presidency, Luter said he's not campaigning.

"I do hear the people talking," he said. "They talk to me about it. But I've been telling them, `Let's just take this one day at a time, one year at a time.' ... I'm praying about it and just praying that God will just lead us."

In other business, Baptists passed resolutions that:

-- Decried public "speech or activities" that bring "shame upon the name of Christ and his gospel," citing individuals and groups that have protested funerals, burned Qurans and prayed for the deaths of public officials.

-- Criticized any governmental "coercive measure," including restrictive zoning laws, that aim to limit religious speech or worship; Baptists also affirmed the liberty to "convert to another religion or to no religion."

-- Urged President Obama to force the Justice Department to "follow through on its constitutional responsibility" to defend the Defense of Marriage Act from legal challenges, and commended the House of Representatives for assuming responsibility of defending the 1996 law
that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at June 15, 2011 5:18PM | Comments (15)

Southern Baptists meeting in Phoenix adopted a plan Tuesday (June 14) to try to boost minorities in their top leadership posts as they face continuing reports of stagnant baptism rates and declining membership.

Members of the nation's largest Protestant denomination backed the recommendation for intentionally including minorities as nominees for positions, speakers at the annual meeting, and staff recruited for its seminaries and mission boards.

Before the vote, Executive Committee President and CEO Frank Page acknowledged the need for "measurable information" to help Southern Baptists evaluate their progress on ethnic relations.

"I believe we are living in a day and time where there will be increased ethnic involvement and increased sensitivity to ethnic diversity within our convention," Page pledged to the more than 4,000 Baptists at the Phoenix Convention Center.

"In the principle of honesty, I tell you we have not done as we ought."

The move toward greater diversity comes as the predominantly white denomination grapples with a 2010 baptism rate that was down 5 percent from 2009 and a 0.15 percent drop in membership -- the fourth consecutive year of decline.

The recommendation was the result of two years of study after a Korean pastor from Boston requested an examination of how ethnic churches and their leaders could be more actively involved.

On the convention floor, delegates (known as messengers) defeated a move to change the language of the statement to appoint convention leaders "who are the most Gospel-minded regardless of their ethnic background."

"If we keep the Gospel as the center, everything else will follow and take place," said Channing Kilgore, the Tennessee delegate who offered the amendment.

Others countered that the intentional language was necessary.

"We cannot any longer be a convention that is basically a white convention that anybody can come to," said Pastor Jim Goforth, who leads a multicultural church in Florissant, Mo. "We must intentionally be a convention that reaches out to everyone, and until the stage looks like we want the pew to look like, it won't be that way. It doesn't happen by accident."

SBC President Bryant Wright noted after the vote that the denomination was founded for two reasons -- "one was bad, one was great" -- the defense of slavery and sharing the Gospel.

"It took us 150 years to come to our senses ... and seek the forgiveness of God and to apologize with our African-American friends and to ask their forgiveness for the strain of racism all through our history," he said. "But there's a noble reason for which we were founded, and that is for the propagation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

In recent decades, the convention has passed 11 resolutions seeking "greater ethnic participation" -- including a 1995 resolution apologizing for past defense of slavery -- but church leaders deemed them insufficient.

"In spite of the Convention's frequent affirmations expressing its desire to see greater ethnic involvement and participation in SBC life, the Convention has not adopted a consistent means by which it can ascertain participation of ethnic churches and church leaders in Convention life," reads the report that led to the recommendation.

Dwight McKissic, a black Texas pastor who has called for the denomination to be more proactive on inclusiveness, said he stayed home this year because he got tired of the dearth of minorities on the platform at the annual meeting.

McKissic, who pastors a predominantly black congregation, recently helped launch a new Southern Baptist church with a multicultural congregation.

McKissic and other Southern Baptist leaders hope the moves toward diversity will include the election of New Orleans pastor Fred Luter, an African-American, as first vice president. But even if Luter is elected president next year, as many are speculating, McKissic said there will still be more to do.

"The SBC (will have) really dealt seriously with their racial issues and past when they put a minority person in charge" of a mission board or seminary, he said.

The Rev. David Lema Jr., a Cuba native and associate director of theological education for Florida Baptists, said the Executive Committee's support for greater inclusiveness means the issue is no longer a matter of a "voice crying in the wilderness" but a more authoritative stance.

"I believe that the Southern Baptist Convention is turning a corner and it's turning a corner not just of awareness but it's a corner now of reality, of action," he said.

Southern Baptist leaders say half the churches started in the last decade were predominantly African-American or ethnic, and the number of churches with mostly minority membership increased from 13 percent to 18.5 percent between 1998 and 2008.

Ken Weathersby of the denomination's North American Mission Board said he encourages the more than two dozen ethnic groups affiliated with his agency to evangelize beyond their particular community.

"We are not commanded just to plant among people that look like us," he said. "We are commanded to plant churches and commanded to make disciples among all ethnics."

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at June 15, 2011 10:28AM | Comments (1)

Military aggression in recent weeks by Sudan against southern Sudan is costing more lives almost daily. After northern Sudanese forces recently occupied the North-South, oil-rich border town of Abyei, many analysts feared the worst: that more bloodshed would occur, killing many innocent people and placing great stress on the fragile peace between North and South. Sometimes nightmares come true.

CT senior writer Sheryl Blunt earlier today wrote this dispatch about how desperate things have become in remote areas of southern Sudan, just in the past week to ten days:

Peace activists and Southern Sudanese officials are calling for rapid foreign intervention in Southern Sudan as well as in the contested border region where reports of mass killings and ethnic cleansing are on the rise in the Nuba Mountainsand elsewhere.

In January Southern Sudan voted for independence. It is scheduled to secede on July 9. But reports of recent fighting in Abyei, located in the oil-producing border region, and Equitoria, is threatening the new nation’s future.

On Thursday the Sudan Tribune reported that Southern Sudan was calling for “foreign militaryintervention” in the border state of South Kordofanin order to stop the escalating fighting.

Joseph Ukel, a Southern Sudanese education official told the Tribune military intervention was necessary since Sudan’s Northern government had officially announced it would be driving Southern Sudan’s SPLA forces (Sudan People's Liberation Army) from the region.

Kimberly Smith, president of Make Way Partners, which finances the only indigenous-run orphanages in the country, said she believes the terror tactics being employed against civilians throughout the South are intended to stop the new nation from claiming its independence.

The north’s Islamic government is also reportedly employing rebel forces from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to terrorize civilians in Southern Sudan near the Uganda border. Smith said that on June 1 “the LRA attacked another village” near an orphanage known as Hope for Sudan that is currently housing 45 children.

“Although we cannot confirm numbers as yet, we do know many were wounded, some were killed, and others were captured,” wrote Smith in a June 3 blog post. In the blog, Lual Atak, the indigenous director of another orphanage of 550 children located along the Darfur border, described the atrocities the LRA solders had committed against thechildren.

He said, “They gathered all the little children together and started killing their people right in front of their eyes,” said Atak. “The children were so terrorized. The LRA then made the children begin killing theirown parents. After the slaughter, the boys were forced to carry large metal barrels, and the girls were forced to fetch water to fill the barrels. They then had to build fires around the barrels. While the water began to boil, the children were forced to hack up their parents and fellows bodies and throw their dismembered parts in the boiling water. After sometime, the children were forced to eat their own parents and fellows flesh. … Once the LRA knew the children were so traumatized they would do anything, kill anyone, and not try to run away, they left the village with their new soldiers and sexslaves.”

In the past the Khartoum government has employed Joseph Kony’s LRA to carry out attacks against Southern Sudanese. In 2008 the LRA captured 300 orphans from the village of Motiin Eastern Equitoria where Smith’s organization was about to begin building their Hope for Sudan orphanage.

Last week, Romano Nero, the orphanage’s indigenous director, sent pictures of women slaughtered along the roadside near the Eastern Equitorian village of Kapoeta. Children found on the roadside next to their mothers’ bodies are now being cared for at the orphanage. Smith said it had not been determined whether the LRA or Khartoum’s GOS (Government of Sudan) forces were responsible for the attack.

Similar LRA attacks in the south have been documented by German newsbroadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Meanwhile, reports of renewed attacks in the contested Nuba Mountain region are prompting activists to demand an immediate U.S. response.

“The United States must intervene and stop the ethnic cleansing of the Nuba that is taking place right now in the Nuba Mountains,” wrote Faith McDonnell, director of the Instituteon Religion and Democracy’s Religious Liberty Program and Church Alliance for a New Sudan in a recent statement.

McDonnell and others are urging Congress and political candidates tospeak out in order to prevent potential genocide. In 2009 Samaritan's Purse leader Franklin Graham visited Nuba and told CT that more than 1,000 churches have been destroyed, and between one to two million people have been murdered over the course of the 21-year war.

“What Khartoum is doingright now makes the situations in Libya,Egypt, and even Syriapale by comparison,” wrote McDonnell.

“Our friends are being slaughtered.”

Posted by Tim Morgan at June 11, 2011 6:03PM | Comments (8)

Last June, I blogged about the staggering difficulty that some Muslim converts to Christianity have in seeking asylum in the United States.

But here's some good news on that front: Hussein Wario, who came to Christ from a Muslim background, informed me today that recent court action will grant him a new hearing on his asylum application; and, that he is no longer in immediate danger of being deported back to Kenya.

Earlier today, he emailed me a press statement saying:

A year ago the Associated Press broke the news federal court of appeals had declined to overturn a lower court’s decision to deny Hussein Wario—the author of Cracks in the Crescent—asylum and refused to reverse the order to send him back to Kenya where he fears persecution. He learned of the court’s decision from the media. Since then, Wario filed a motion pro se to reopen his asylum case with the Board of Immigration Appeals and it has been granted.

The decision in part reads: Considering the totality of circumstances presented in the respondent’s motion, which has not been opposed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the proceedings are reopened under the provisions of 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(a), and the record will be remanded to the Immigration Judge to provide the respondent a further opportunity to establish his eligibility for relief from removal…

FURTHER ORDER (sic): The record is remanded to the Immigration Judge for further proceedings not inconsistent with this order and for the entry of a new decision.
The motion showed new evidence of change in country conditions in Kenya. Wario cited cases of severe persecutions of Muslim converts to Christianity with at least one of them killed since Wario’s petition was denied in 2006.

Part of the background to such cases is the new reality that more people with a Muslim background are deciding to follow Christ -- especially from Muslim-majority nations or countries that have a strong Islamic tradition.

By some estimates, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity in Africa each year. Hard to believe. But watch this Youtube video.

The decision of these individuals places them at great personal risk. Hussein (writing in the third person) emails more about his own story:

This has been a long and arduous process for Wario and his wife. The order to reopen his asylum case is their first real good news regarding immigration in almost 9 years. If you think only those in the US illegally or undocumented immigrants have problems, think again. Wario filed for asylum in August 2002 while he was still in legal status, but his application was denied and was not referred to the Immigration Court for adjudication. A veteran immigration attorney and law professor told him the asylum office normally decides even before an interview which asylum application to deny. Since Wario’s interview was only for 45 minutes, it met that criterion. He applied again and the asylum office told him to petition the Immigration Court.

The Judge found Wario’s testimony credible but denied him asylum because US State Department Country Reports on Kenya did not show any persecution of Muslim apostates. Sadly, US Embassy in Nairobi uses Kenyan mainstream media reports to compile Kenya Country Report and there are reasons the issue of persecution had been silent. Wario has dealt with every request or order the government has made and appealed every adverse decision according to the law.

In the case of a Muslim convert who was killed in February 2010, the Kenyan police determined his murder was a robbery, even disregarding death threats he had reported to them. There is no known media report in Kenya of his gruesome murder, let alone a report revealing his killing was on the account of his apostasy.

Wario is in contact with other Muslim apostates in Kenya. Some of them receive death threats on regular basis. The police have been of little help. The Kenyan media has turned a deaf ear to their plights as well. The closest to a news report is in the US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report 2010:

Local Christian organizations reported that individuals who converted to Christianity from Islam, particularly individuals of Somali ethnic origin, were often threatened with violence or death by Muslim religious leaders and their families. These threats prompted some individuals to go into hiding.

Inquiries were made to the Kenyan media regarding the lack of coverage of religious persecution. A Kenyan reporter said there was news blackout because the Kenyan “media policies are very strict, especially when it comes to reports on religion.” He even averred how the East African Standard offices were burnt down in the mid 1990s because the newspaper published an article on Islam written by a Muslim scholar. An Ismaili Muslim organization is the principal shareholder of the Daily Nation, a Kenyan newspaper with a wide circulation. It is possible Muslim persecution of apostates gets no coverage in the paper.

Wario is grateful for the Board’s decision granting him options for immigration relief. The order for him to leave the United States is off the table. He will have a new hearing to determine his eligibility for a new immigration status. He thanks all who have been praying for him and his wife, Rita.

Posted by Tim Morgan at June 6, 2011 1:01PM | Comments (3)