Believing that the casualties and violence in Kenya were being grossly underreported, the Kenyan blogging community put together Ushahidi.com. Ushahidi means “witness” in Swahili. The website is mapping out occurrences of violence throughout Kenya, asking witnesses to submit incidents on a detailed form on a computer or by SMS. Kenyan NGOs verify the reports before they are shown on the map.

Erik Hersman, who blogs at WhiteAfrican.com, is trying to get the word out, “In hopes that by reaching out and talking to a broad selection of media more people will hear about it and that the news of Ushahidi will trickle down to the Kenyans who need it most.”

Could this be the future of crisis aid? Through this site, people are not only able to set the record straight about what’s really happening (“There is still a ban in place on live broadcasts related to the election here and this seems to be one way of ensuring that information is not being choked off by the government,” writes one blogger), they’re also able to communicate with those who have the resources to help them. Some recent posts include:

Some displaced families are going hungry. Rowdy mobs are stopping villagers from taking food to the starving women and children whose property has been looted from the tea estates where they were working. These are third generation workers being evicted in retaliatory attacks. Someone should provide enough security so that the villagers can feed these people without fear.

* * *
Yes there is a lot of need specially food, Mosquito nets for those i saw in Oyugis, they dont have food and i was thinking that if we could get some money we can buy some flour and then we transport them there and give them. I used my own tranport money just to look if things have come back to normal in those places and at least there is movements of vehicles although fares is double due to fuel cost which is very high at the moment. . . I want to thank you all for doing this for Kenyans specially when people are really in need. May God bless you all.

Public radio's The World yesterday reported on the website, which went live last Wednesday.

Posted by Susan Wunderink at January 15, 2008 | Comments (0)

To celebrate my 60th birthday yesterday, I had dinner with the Secretary General of the United Nations. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank covered the event in his puckish (my wife called it "snarky") style.

Okay, so I had dinner with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and 300 other people. And the Washington Post didn't even mention me. Secretary General Ban and I were only sitting at adjacent tables. But I did get a grip-and-grin photo op with him before the banquet, and after his speech I was one of three evangelical leaders invited to give a brief response.

The banquet itself was a joint effort of the National Association of Evangelicals and the Micah Challenge. It was the closing event of the NAE’s semi-annual board meeting and the opening event of the Global Leaders Forum. Organizations involved in the Forum (beyond the NAE and Micah Challenge) included Bread for the World, World Relief, Frontiers, The Salvation Army, Tearfund, the Evangelical Environmental Network, the Korean Church Coalition, and the UN Foundation and the UN Millennium Campaign.

Attendees at the sold-out event got this message loud and clear:

The UN needs evangelicals to help them hold governments to their promised support for the Millennium Development Goals. One hundred ninety-two nations signed on to the MDG’s in 2000 and we are now half-way to the target date of 2015, but without the progress we should have seen by this point, especially in sub-Sarahan Africa. Some nations have been slow in paying their share of the costs.

The MDG’s are all good: ensuring universal primary education, fighting hunger and poverty, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health, empowering women, fighting specific diseases like malaria and HIV/AIDS, working for environmental sustainability and a global partnership for development.

Many of these things have already engaged evangelicals, and Secretary General Ban reminded us of that. He also reminded us of the UN’s desire to work with faith-based groups. From its beginning in 1945, the UN was engaged with the faith community. Forty-two faith-based non-governmental organizations were involved in founding the organization. Today, 400 religious NGOs are accredited to the UN.

He also quoted Isaiah 58:10 to much applause. “If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.”

In a sense, last night's banquet and today’s issue-oriented discussions are really less about evangelicals fighting disease and poverty and more about evangelicals working in partnerships--partnerships between Western evangelicals and those in the developing world and partnerships with non-evangelicals.

We cautiously engaged those of other shades of Christian faith and even other religions in the mid-90s when we threw tremendous weight behind the effort to pass the International Religious Freedom Act and the creation of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. We then enlarged the circle of cooperation to work on legislation to fight sex trafficking and, later, human-rights abuses in North Korea. The circle has expanded yet again as many evangelical leaders are partnering on issues of climate change.

Partnerships give evangelicals a sense of participation and empowerment. It gives us the chance to take on really big issues. That’s a strange feeling for a movement whose consciousness is rooted in old-style fundamentalism. Fundamentalism was about being the few and the proud--I mean, the pure. The evangelicalism that emerged in the 1940s hoped for a new engagement with society while maintaining doctrinal and ethical integrity. Its leaders, like first CT editor Carl F. H. Henry and first CT board chair Harold John Ockenga preached a strong social justice message. But the old fundamentalist consciousness still lurks, and these partnerships stretch the evangelical sense of identity.

Despite the uneasiness of some, leaders like Northland Church's Joel Hunter and the NAE's Rich Cizik are plunging ahead with big grins on their faces. I predict we’ll see a continuing expansion of these alliances as we move to tackle an increasing number of the really big problems facing God's world.

Posted by David Neff at October 12, 2007 | Comments (8)

Tom Butler represented the Church of England at a House of Lords consultation on organ donation in the European Union yesterday. He presented the church’s position that organ donation is a very Christian thing to sign up for, BBC news reports.
“Giving oneself and one’s possessions voluntarily for the well being of others and without compulsion is a Christian duty of which organ donation is a striking example,” the Church of England's statement says. It also says Christians have “a mandate to heal”—but they’re not talking about miracle working.
The Church of England is supporting a switch from an opt-in (to organ donation) to an opt-out system, hoping to help Britain overcome a chronic organ shortage, which can be an ethically tricky problem to solve. Their statement addresses a few of the issues, such as selling organs for profit, making sure the donor is dead, and respect for the body and the bereaved.
“What is done with the body matters,” the Church of England affirms. “The body at its burial or cremation should ideally be recognizably the body of the person who has died.”

Posted by Susan Wunderink at October 9, 2007 | Comments (0)

One of the most startling images from the Viet Nam war was the self-immolation of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc. On June 11, 1963, the monk burned himself to death at a busy Saigon intersection. (You can see Malcolm Brown’s famous news photo here and read part of David Halberstam’s eyewitness report for the New York Times halfway through this Wikipedia article.)

Thich Quang Duc was protesting the anti-Buddhist discrimination of Ngo Dinh Diem’s regime. But the disturbing image of his sacrifice seared itself into the brains of people around the globe. At the time, I didn’t understand the logic of self-immolation, but I was deeply moved.

Today Buddhist monks are once again taking to the streets of a South Asian nation, risking their bodies in nonviolent protest against an oppressive regime. This time the country is Myanmar (or Burma, as most Americans still refer to it).

This morning, the AP reported from Yangon (Rangoon):

Soldiers in Myanmar pounded down on dissenters Friday by swiftly breaking up street gatherings of die-hard activists, occupying key Buddhist monasteries and cutting public Internet access. The moves raised concerns that a crackdown on civilians that has killed at least 10 people this week was set to intensify.

By sealing Buddhist monasteries, the government seemed intent on clearing the streets of monks, who have spearheaded the demonstrations and are revered by most of their Myanmar countrymen. This could embolden troops to lash out harder on remaining protesters.

And in the Washington Post, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson commented on the spiritual power of the Buddhist monks’ protest.

[T]hese protests have ... shown that nonviolence need not be tame or toothless. The upside-down bowls carried by some of the monks signal that they will not accept alms from the leaders of the regime, denying them the ability to atone for bad deeds or to honor their ancestors. These chanting monks are playing spiritual hardball.

Gerson then mentioned the familiar spiritual analogs in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and the spiritual revolutions that helped to bring down Communism in Eastern Europe. “Religious dissidents have the ability not only to organize opposition to tyrants but also to shame them. Political revolutions often begin as revolutions of the spirit.”

Gerson uses the language of spirituality to describe these bold moves against evil and on behalf of freedom. It is ironic that the words spiritual and spirituality have taken on such warm, fuzzy tones in contemporary American speech. They convey the image of spiritual drifters, people who are not anchored to any strong beliefs but are constantly going with the flow as they quest for the next feel-good experience.

Maybe, as these monks face the tear gas and truncheons of the oppressor, they can help us reclaim the hard edge of spirituality in our own culture.

* * *
P.S. Buddhists aren't the only ones resisting the Myanmar government. Christians have also risked their lives in the struggle for freedom. But Christians are largely located in tribal regions away from urban centers like Yangon. For past Christianity Today coverage of tribal Christian resistance see "Burma's Almost Forgotten." And to learn how Christianity came to Burma, you can order Christian History and Biography issue 90, which tells the story of Ann and Adoniram Judson, early missionaries and Bible translators.

Posted by David Neff at September 28, 2007 | Comments (1)

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

Olsen post | Clark post | Olsen response 1 | Clark response 1 | Olsen response 2 | Clark response 2

From Clark's blog:

In a piece that appears on Christianity Today Online, Ted Olsen argues that a plan, which was canceled, to free the Korean hostages in Afghanistan by taking hostage the families of the kidnappers is a bad idea because the Apostle Paul wouldn't have done it. His closing line:

It's hard to imagine Paul writing to the Corinthians, "When persecuted, we persecute; when kidnapped, we kidnap..."

Oh my. Would the Apostle Paul have cut off anyone's head? Probably not, but that doesn't mean that he thought that the civil magistrate shouldn't do so. In fact, the Apostle taught that the civil magistrate had a duty to bear the sword (Rom 13:4).

The real point here is this: the church is the kingdom of God, the locus of the administration of the covenant of grace. The civil magistrate is not the church, it is not an administration of the covenant of grace. The civil magistracy is an administration of law, of the covenant of works, of the principle "do this and live."

This editorial reminds me that much of the evangelical left (e.g., Sojourners) and right (i.e., the "take back America" crowd) do not understand the difference between law and gospel and they are confused about its corollary, the difference between the covenants of works and grace.

We don't need grace from the magistrate. That's not his job. We need him to conduct wars and prosecute justice. If one wants grace: go to church, that's why Christ instituted it as a distinct kingdom.

This editorial seems to assume that there's a Pauline way to rescue hostages. If so is there a Pauline monetary policy? What would Paul write to the Corinthians about the the sub-prime crisis? Should the Fed lower interest rates or should he stand pat because God is opposed to inflation?

I'm not saying what the Koreans (or Americans or Afghanis) should do about the hostages. That's not my place. I'm a minister of the Word, but so far as a I know, the Apostle Paul didn't articulate a social policy. Maybe that was intentional? Maybe he didn't make assumptions that Olsen seems to make and he did make assumptions that Olsen seems to neglect.

My response:

Thanks for your comments about my blog post. I think you'll be interested in an earlier article I wrote that makes some similar points that you're making.

But what I find interesting is that you missed the point that I was talking about the church rather than the government. The hostages are Christian aid workers. Should we automatically assume that it is the duty of the government to save Christian aid workers and missionaries when they fall into persecution? If we go into dangerous places to fulfill our Great Commission mandate, should we look to Caesar when Jesus' promise of persecution is fulfilled?

I do think that it is the church should proclaim justice to the civil magistrate, and that Christians should speak against the government taking innocent people hostage, just as I believe that Christians should speak against the government enabling the killing of the innocent unborn. I also think that the church, and Christians in democratic societies, should speak on behalf of their persecuted brothers and sisters around the world. But I think our witness is damaged when the government takes innocent people hostage in an effort to rescue us from kidnappers.

Do you disagree?

Clark responds:

Hi Ted,

Since you wrote, I've re-read the post a few times to make sure I didn't miss something. I understood that you were talking about "the church" (more on that in a second) but that's why I was criticizing your post. I should have been clearer. I was writing too fast when I should have been working toward meeting a deadline.

Two things. When I say "church" I mean the visible, institutional church. Where you say "church," I would say "Christians." I understand the Kingdom to be the visible church and I understand it's ministry to be wholly spiritual, i.e., to be concerned with Word and sacrament.

Christians can speak to all sorts of things, but not in the name of the church, per se.

I wasn't commenting on what the governments in the US, Korea, or Afghanistan should or shouldn't do.

I agree with you that Christians shouldn't have put the respective governments in such a position, but I wouldn't tell them what to do once they face the crisis.

I'm an amillennialist so I agree with you that Christians ought to expect persecution -- though they shouldn't go out of their way to solicit it.

So, when you say the "church" should proclaim justice to the magistrate, I think I must disagree if the word "church" means, "institutional entity established by Christ."

If by "church" you mean "Christians functioning as citizens" then yes, I think Christians, operating on the basis of natural, creational, common law have a right and duty to call the state to fulfill it's creational function including the various causes you mention. I don't think, however, that our faith gives us special insight as to what governments ought to do or any special status. I'm sure you agree with the latter, but I'm not sure about the former.

Thanks for writing.

I respond:

Scott, thanks again for taking time. And yes, as an editor, I very much appreciate that you met your deadline instead of taking more time answering e-mail!

Can I ask two clarifying questions (and these are honest questions about your views; I'm unclear on whether we actually disagree)?

1. Does the magistrate's duty to bear the sword include the ability to take innocent people hostage in order to influence and punish the guilty family members?

It seems to me that even in very strong "two kingdoms" views, the duty to bear the sword is rather limited. The Augsburg Confession, for example, repeatedly uses important adjectives: "lawful civil ordinances are good works of God ... to award just punishments, to engage in just wars." I do not deny that it's the duty of a government to rescue those in mortal peril, to use force in doing so, or to punish kidnappers and murderers. But I do believe that the means by which and the extent to which the government bears the sword matters (jus in bello). As Augustine wrote, "We do not seek peace in order to be at war, but we go to war that we may have peace. Be peaceful, therefore, in warring, so that you may vanquish those whom you war against, and bring them to the prosperity of peace."

2. Does it matter that the Koreans were sent by a church?
Saemmul Presbyterian Church, to be specific. I wholeheartedly agree that there is entirely too much confusion between the visible, institutional church and the invisible church (Christians). And in this case, it seems to me, the difference matters quite a bit. The church sent these aid workers into a dangerous situation, knowing they were likely to persecuted. That does not mean that the church should not ask the government to intervene against persecution. (Indeed, Paul appealed to Caesar when he faced persecution; yet he did so in service to the gospel rather than merely to spare his life.) But I'm uncomfortable -- horrified, even -- with the government seeking to kidnap innocent Afghans in order secure the release of Christian workers sent by a church. And I think that, given the church's involvement, it does not violate covenant theology for both Christians AND the church to say, "It is unjust to kidnap innocents so that church workers may go free. Please do not do this on our behalf." That, to me, would certainly be part of the church's proclamation ministry.

Again, thanks for this conversation. It's good to think deeper about these things.

Clark responds:

Hi, Ted. These are important questions. I'll interact below.

1. Does the magistrate's duty to bear the sword include the ability to take innocent people hostage in order to influence and punish the guilty family members?

I agree that the magistrate is responsible to the moral law, but I also think that it's long been recognized that under war, governments have liberty to do things that they would not ordinarily do. We have practiced carpet bombing killing large numbers of civilians that we would not otherwise have done. We're certainly at war with the Taliban and if their taking hostages is an act of war then perhaps taking their families hostages is also an act of war?

That said, I'm not saying what the governments should do except to say that they should act according to the second table of the moral law as it applies to war.

My query is how Scripture applies to this whole question. Your original post seemed to assume that there's a biblical or Christian response to this problem and I don't see it. Isn't that the force of your invocation of Paul, of asking what Paul would say (either to the Korean congregation who sent the missionaries or to the governments involved)?

That was the assumption I wanted to query. I don't know that we can deduce any sort of social policy from Scripture beyond whatever it tells us about the natural, creational law. Certainly there wouldn't be a "Christian" position on rescuing the hostages. There might be a wiser position or perhaps a position that accords with the natural law more than others. E.g., it might be more just not to take hostage the family of Taliban members.

It seems to me that even in very strong "two kingdoms" views, the duty to bear the sword is rather limited. The Augsburg Confession, for example, repeatedly uses important adjectives: "lawful civil ordinances are good works of God ... to award just punishments, to engage in just wars."

Of course, this is part of what is in dispute here, whether the war in Afghanistan is just and whether in the face of the patently unlawful acts by the Taliban a government is entitled to retaliate.

I do not deny that it's the duty of a government to rescue those in mortal peril, to use force in doing so, or to punish kidnappers and murderers. But I do believe that the means by which and the extent to which the government bears the sword matters (jus in bello). As Augustine wrote, "We do not seek peace in order to be at war, but we go to war that we may have peace. Be peaceful, therefore, in warring, so that you may vanquish those whom you war against, and bring them to the prosperity of peace."

I know it's heresy to disagree with Augustine on the just war, and I agree with Augustine's general theory that there are such things as just wars, I think Augustine (inasmuch as he assumed Christendom) was still confusing the two kingdoms and the covenants of works and grace.

The magistrate only works for the law. He doesn't work for the gospel at all. Here I dissent from much of contemporary evangelicalism when it continues to assume a sort of Christendom and continues to confuse the two kingdoms. The magistrate, as he wages war, should act justly and bring justice--as much as possible in this life--but not in the interests of grace; except as bringing justice and thus peace will facilitate the interests of the church.

2. Does it matter that the Koreans were sent by a church? Saemmul Presbyterian Church, to be specific. I wholeheartedly agree that there is entirely too much confusion between the visible, institutional church and the invisible church (Christians). And in this case, it seems to me, the difference matters quite a bit. The church sent these aid workers into a dangerous situation, knowing they were likely to persecuted.

Thanks for this clarification. I do remember reading and hearing this. We have prayed for the safe deliverance of the hostages.

The church probably erred in sending the missionaries to Afghanistan. I think we agree that, if they chose to do this, they should accept the consequences. Certainly this denomination should not ask the government to act one way or the other.

Individuals are free to speak to the government about policy and to encourage this or that course, but the church as church should remain silent on penultimate matters. The church as church may speak to ultimate matters (life, death, truth, salvation etc) and it's true that some policy questions verge on ultimate questions, but churches should exercise extreme caution.

That does not mean that the church should not ask the government to intervene against persecution. (Indeed, Paul appealed to Caesar when he faced persecution; yet he did so in service to the gospel rather than merely to spare his life.)

Here we disagree. Paul invoked his rights as a citizen. He didn't put his appeal to the magistrate on the basis of the gospel. He didn't say to the magistrate, "Listen, I'm an apostle of Christ therefore you ought to...." He invoked the same legal rights that any citizen had. Yes, it was to the advan tage of the gospel, but the appeal was made on the basis of common or natural law not special revelation or grace.

But I'm uncomfortable -- horrified, even -- with the government seeking to kidnap innocent Afghans in order secure the release of Christian workers sent by a church.

Personally, so am I, but my discomfort lies in my understanding of natural law, not special revelation. I might be wrong in my understanding of NL. Perhaps there's a common/natural way of justifying taking Taliban families as hostage? After all, haven't the Taliban and other Jihadists utterly blurred the line between combatants and non-combatants? They can't have it both ways.

And I think that, given the church's involvement, it does not violate covenant theology for both Christians AND the church to say, "It is unjust to kidnap innocents so that church workers may go free. Please do not do this on our behalf." That, to me, would certainly be part of the church's proclamation ministry.

Well, I'm not sure how this relates to covenant theology, but it would violate the spirituality of the church for the visible, institutional church, to speak to penultimate public policy matters. The only commission the church has is to preach the law and the gospel, administer the sacraments, and church discipline. Anything the church does outside of those three things is problematic.

Best,

Scott

Posted by Ted Olsen at August 16, 2007 | Comments (4)

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

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


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


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

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

Posted by Ted Olsen at August 14, 2007 | Comments (8)

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

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

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

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

Whoa there, Podner!

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

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

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

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

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

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

First, a belief in individuals taking responsibility for their own salvation. Well, of course we evangelical Protestants don't teach that individuals "take responsibility for their own salvation." We teach that the grace of God comes to individuals in their pervasively sinful state and enables them to respond to his love by faith. But, yes, we do emphasize that individuals can have a personal, saving relationship with Jesus (as opposed to salvation necessarily being mediated through clerics and church ritual).

But neither Stoddard's version of evangelical belief nor the correct one has much to do with capital punishment. If anything, belief in the individual dimension of salvation drives evangelicals to engage in more extensive and more intense prison ministry than other Christians.

Second, evangelicals find justification for capital punishment in Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament. Well, no and yes.

No, evangelicals who support capital punishment do not use the Old Testament as their primary source of justification. If you ask almost any evangelical in the pew if they think that Sabbath-breaking or homosexuality should be a capital crime, they would shudder in horror at the thought.

Yes, evangelicals do find support in Scripture--but as part of God's plan for the secular order. See Romans 13:1-7, where the Apostle Paul portrays "the sword" and taxes as legitimate functions of the state. But to consider this a legitimate function of the state is not to approve of the way any given state carries out its responsibility for retribution.

When studies show disproportionate application of the death penalty by race or economic status, Christians of any and every stripe should be challenging the system. And when DNA-testing and other death-row efforts repeatedly reveal the miscarriage of justice, Christians should be working to make sure justice is truly served.

Posted by David Neff at August 13, 2007 | Comments (14)

Zimbabwe's state paper runs an op-ed today saying that the country's independent media aren't sufficiently criticizing Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube. (The archbishop, who has been the chief critic of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's extensive human rights abuses, was accused last week of adultery.) In The Herald, Caesar Zvayi writes that Zimbabwe's independent media, are "punishing the innocent while letting Barabas go scot-free."

Hmm. So if Mugabe's newspaper wants to call Ncube Barabbas, then that would make Mugabe...

It wouldn't be the first, or most egregious example, or Mugabe's cronies comparing him to Jesus. As Chenjerai Hove wrote in Pambazuka News earlier this year,

In the quest for glory and grandeur, the presidential palace is full of charlatans, praise-singers and flatterers. First they used to call him 'the son of God', and then one minister publicly said 'Mugabe is our Jesus Christ'. Next the minister of education and culture has recently designed and installed a 'throne' in parliament, for 'king Mugabe.' Then the minister of local government would not be outdone. He has decided to build 'a shrine' in Mugabe's home village. A shrine is a place of worship. So the president has become a god who deserves a 'shrine.' Thus, from VaMugabe ndibaba' (Mugabe is our father) to 'the son of God' to 'Jesus Christ' to a 'shrine' a place of worship, God.

Perhaps the most famous example is deputy minister of local housing Tony Gara calling Mugabe "the other son of God." In a 2002 African Sociological Review article, Ezra Chitando describes how the words of Christian songs were changed for political ends. "I will never cry when Jesus is there," for example, became, "I will never cry when Mr. Mugabe is there."

All of this might be confusing. If you're trying to remember the difference between Jesus and Robert Mugabe, here's a helpful tip: Jesus is the one who fed the 5,000. Mugabe is the one starving millions.

Posted by Ted Olsen at July 24, 2007 | Comments (5)

CT has reported on the tensions Habitat for Humanity's growth placed on the home-building ministry and it's transition from founder Millard Fuller's leadership to the leadership of Jonathan Reckford.

Now, The New York Times is reporting that Reckford's new direction is spurring opposition from Habitat local chapters:

Habitat for Humanity International is asking affiliates to sign an agreement that would establish a quality-control checklist, and a new policy gives headquarters a cut of each donation it receives that is earmarked for an affiliate. And the changes are meeting with opposition. ...

“They’re contending with what is almost a takeover,” said T. Weir LaBatt III, former chairman of the San Antonio board. “They’re building up a giant corporate structure run by corporate guys wanting complete control, which is completely the opposite of what Habitat has been.”

Posted by Rob Moll at July 18, 2007 | Comments (0)

In its September 2005 cover story, Christianity Today introduced Shane Claiborne and the Philadelphia intentional community, the Simple Way as models of what is being called the "new monasticism."

The daughter of friends of mine has worked with the Simple Way in its Yes! And afterschool program. They've kept me informed today via e-mail of the effects of a horrendous 7-alarm fire on the Simple Way community. As a result of the fire, eight neighboring families have lost their homes, the Simple Way has lost its community center, and Simple Way members Shane Claiborne and Jesce Walz have lost all their possessions. Fortunately, no community members were seriously injured or lost their lives.

"This fire will forever change the fabric of our community," says the Simple Way website. Check there for further updates, for fire photos, and for information on giving to help the Simple Way and the displaced families.

[uncredited photo from thesimpleway.org]

Posted by David Neff at June 20, 2007 | Comments (5)

Sticks and carrots:

At the White House this morning, President Bush ran out of patience with the genocidal regime ruling Sudan. He announced a collection of sanctions against the nation-state of Sudan and individuals associated with the sickening killing and rape still going on in the Darfur region at the western border with Chad.

See this video clip:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2007/05/29/VI2007052900512.html

Here's a link to the Washington Post online article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/29/AR2007052900462.html

The Save Darfur Coalition includes many evangelical groups that should be encouraged by this move. China especially is likely to resist the imposition of sanctions.

We Christians must understand how the situation in Darfur ripples throughout the region and globally. Until there is real peace in Sudan, this region of Africa will remain violent and unstable.

The carrot and the stick are now on the table, Omar Bashir.

Prayer for the persecuted church in Sudan in the south should just be the beginning of our commitment. I agree with President Bush that we cannot "avert our eyes" from this suffering.

Posted by Tim Morgan at May 29, 2007 | Comments (4)

Our end-of-life rhetoric is typically limited, as Atul Gawande complains in The New York Times, to gaining more control over death. For some, this means passing legislation to allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of drugs that would prematurely kill a terminally ill patient. For many Christian groups, it means opposing physician-assisted-suicide or the withdrawl of life support from people who can't speak for themselves. For some people it means signing statements that ask doctors to do everything possible to keep them alive.

But, as Gawande points out, there is a lot of life to live between our active years and our dying days. "We don’t like thinking about it, but after retirement age, about half of us eventually move into a nursing home, usually around age 80. ... But we don’t much talk about getting more control over our lives in such places. "

The priority of a nursing home is to keep residents safe, Gawande says. Describing one woman who recently entered a nursing home, he writes, "Basic matters, like when she goes to bed, wakes up, dresses, and eats were put under the rigid schedule of institutional life. Her main activities have become bingo, movies, and other forms of group entertainment."

This kind of living, he argues, takes the meaning out of life. "Surveys of nursing home residents reveal chronic boredom, loneliness, and lack of meaning—results not fundamentally different from prisoners, actually."

It doesn't have to be this way. Some nursing homes are rethinking institutional life for the disabled elderly, and they are doing it within the confines of what the government will help pay for--an achievement indeed. Life can have meaning an purpose even when many of the things that provided fulfilment are no longer possible for us to do.

Certainly, being in a nursing home does not prohibit a meaningful life. One geriatrician told me he always tells his patients upon retirement, "Wake up knowing what you will do that day, and go to bed knowing someone was helped by what you did." Such a thing is possible, he points out, in a nursing home.

Yet, there is also a place here for the church. How can we better care for our widows, our widowers, our frail elderly. How can we give their lives meaning and keep them integrated into a church community?

This is a question baby boomers, who have already changed so much of the American church, are just begining to face.

Posted by Rob Moll at May 24, 2007 | Comments (1)

Local officials in Guangxi province are using brutal methods to crack down on those families that did not pay fines for breaking China's one-child policy. The Washington Post reports

birth control bureaucrats showed up in a half-dozen towns with sledgehammers and threatened to knock holes in the homes of people who had failed to pay fines imposed for having more than one child. Other family planning officials, backed by hired toughs, pushed their way into businesses owned by parents of more than one child and confiscated everything from sacks of rice to color televisions.

The residents fought back. "Thousands of peasants and townspeople encircled government and birth control centers across surrounding Bobai County, residents here said, stoning riot police brought in to quell the unrest and, in some places, trashing local offices."

It seems the culture wars in China are taken a bit more literally than here.

Posted by Rob Moll at May 23, 2007 | Comments (1)

When I saw that Shane Claiborne's book The Irresistible Revolution was being released on audio, I wasn't surprised. It was a good read; Shane's an interesting character. But I was surprised when I saw the catalog's ad copy that read something like "The revolution continues, and now it's available on MP3." How can these guys continue their critique of consumer Christianity when they're hawking their goods like this? I thought.

I was relieved then, when I saw The Wittenburg Door's interview with Claiborne in its May/June issue.

DOOR: What do you do with the royalties from your book?

CLAIBORNE: In the back of the book, I list ordinary radicals and local revolutions. We're spreading that money out to a lot of other groups that are doing beautiful work. To me, that's the only logical way that I would know to have integrity with that.

The rest of the interview is Shane being Shane. Here's his response to his being on the cover of CT.

When people want to talk about the new monasticism I'm like, "No, no. I'm not really interested in that. I want to talk about community, church history, and things like that." I feel like it's one thing to say life happens like we're doing here, talking in a diner. It's another thing to say, "Let's have a conference about talking in diners." Now we have book deals and stuff, so it gets really complicated.

Also, from reading a lot of the buzz around all of this, you get the sense that God is very, very hard at work among male white evangelicals. That puts a tremendous responsibility on those of us who find ourselves in places where we're more visible because there is a whole lot happening in the Church all over the world that doesn't make the magazine covers.

Posted by Rob Moll at May 17, 2007 | Comments (1)

Evangelicals are great activists. We're engaged on practially every issue. As a church, James told us to take care of the widows and orphans. Both metaphorically and literally we do. A prime example is the care given to AIDS victims in Africa, where the disease has made orphans and widows of millions.

But here in the U.S., we tend to think that the few widows and orphans we have are taken care of. Not so. A recent New Yorker article describes the way aging has changed and how we have regressed in our ability to care for the elderly. For Christians, who have been commanded to care for widows, this news comes with particular urgency: "More than half of the very old now live without a spouse." Add to that the facts that today's elderly had fewer children than other generations and those children are likely scattered across the country. In addition, medical care and nursing homes are extremely expensive. Add to that the fact that a major response to the abundance of care needed and the lack of resources available has been a major cause for advancing the argument for assisted suicide, and I think you have a major reason why evangelicals need to quickly get the activists in gear on this issue.

Because most others are not. "People natually prefer to avoid the subject of their decrepitude," writes Atul Gawande. Still, there are costs to averting our eyes from the realities. For one thing, we put off changes that we need to make as a society. For another, we deprive ourselves of opportunities to change the individual experience of aging for the better.

Gawande focuses on policy problems. Insurers don't want to pay for preventative care. Hospitals lose money treating arthritis instead of the hip replacement that might be caused by an arthritic toe which makes walking difficult. Assisted-living facilities and nursing homes are ridiculously expensive. And nurses are more and more difficult to find. We're losing geriatricians, who specialize in managing a person's decline to allow for a gradually increasing frailty instead of one big emergency that lands someone in a nursing home. Instead doctors, 97 percent of whom take no courses in geriatrics, are practicing plastic surgery. "When the prevailing fantasy is that we can be ageless, the geriantrician's uncomfortable demand is that we accept we are not."

Christians haven't been hesitant to apply their activism to stop slave trading, HIV/AIDS, or religious persecution. In many ways this seems a simpler problem. Let's do better to visit the elderly, include them in our churches, and learn from them as they navigate one of the most difficult periods of life--when they face their mortality eye to eye. Surely they have spiritual lessons to teach us about loving not the world. And in the meantime, we'll be fulfilling James's command: "Look after orphans and widows in their distress."

Posted by Rob Moll at May 1, 2007 | Comments (11)

A Sam Smith sports column in today's Chicago Tribune has sparked a thought that might help Christians slow down big injustices. It seems that a few teams have figured out how to defense mammoth, domineering big menf like Shaq. You do it with quickness--the defender must antipate the big man's move, step immediately in his path, establish his position, fall backwards when contacted by the big man, and so draw a charge. Foul on the big man. Enough fouls, and the big man sits on the bench--at least until the next game.

Christians activists are up against some pretty mammoth, domineering social injustices, and they are constantly getting beaten by them. I'm wondering if quick footedness leading to a charge--which usually requires the defender to flop backwards, feigning inappropriate contact--would constitute a social foul. Enough of those, and maybe the public would ask the social justice to sit on the bench. At least for awhile.

I'll let others speculate how exactly this applies to social injustices. But my intuition tells me there is something for us to learn in this style of basketball defense. It's helped the Chicago Bulls nuetralize Shaq. Not that Shaq is a great social injustice--though a Bulls fan might think so.

Posted by Mark Galli at April 24, 2007 | Comments (2)