Magic Statistics

Persecution of Christians in Sri Lanka escalates as Parliament considers a bill prohibiting "forcible" conversions.  Last month Hindu militants in India attacked Christians alleging "coerced" conversions; in Sri Lanka, it's Buddhists.

Buddhist aggression against Christians has escalated and on Sunday, April 23rd, a Methodist church in Piliyandala, Sri Lanka was interrupted.  Buddhist demonstrators rallied a local mob of 100 by yelling anti-Christian slogans from the loudspeakers mounted on their vehicle, disrupting the church service.  The perpetrators  also incited the crowd’s anger by calling the 20 Christians inside “Anti Buddhist.”

Police protected the pastor and congregation after some demonstrators invaded the service.  But when the worshippers got outside, they found their vehicles had been vandalised.

via Christian Persecution Blog.

That's the view of Jan Pronk, UN representative in Sudan, who has been attending peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria, between the Sudanese government and the several rebel groups.  Sudan refuses to allow a UN force to step in until an agreement is negotiated.  The rebel groups have political demands: sharing of wealth and power with Khartoum.  There are tribal-ethnic grievances as well.  Mr Pronk elucidates at his weblog:

The tribal dimension is often underestimated by people outside Sudan. However, tribal conflicts are age-old and deeply rooted. There is an ethnic dimension to the tribal conflicts, to the extent that some tribes are considered to be African, others Arab. There is also an economic dimension: the struggle for land and water, the looting of cattle, the most important resource of many tribes. Tribal conflicts are often related to land claims, with a long history. Some tribes consider themselves as more Darfurian than others, because they settled in Darfur much earlier. Some tribes, though living in Darfur since many generations, are still considered to be Chadian, or West African. Some tribes were favored by the British colonial regime. Others were accustomed to keep slaves. Some tribes are more closely affiliated with the rebels (the Fur, the Zaghawa and the Massaliet). Other tribes are more inclined to support notions of pan-Arabism.

Many tribes have militia, in order to defend their interests. They fight ruthlessly, retaliate out of proportion and often use pre-emptive strikes. Killing if women and children is seen as an acceptable form of revenge for the looting of cattle. Militia do not respect human rights or international law. No wonder that notions of genocide and ethnic cleansing have been used in order to describe the ordeals of the victims of the militia.

Attempts have been made to organise reconciliation conferences among the various tribal groups, but animosities are so deep-seated that reconciliations do not last long.  The UN has declined to get involved in this aspect of the conflict, but Mr Pronk says it is just as essential as the political talks.

Deep distrust is evident on all sides of the political and tribal divides.

No distinction is made between combatants and others. Everybody belonging to a tribe is, in the eyes of other tribes, responsible for the doings of the tribal fighters. I met only people who consider themselves victims. Nobody admits having attacked, everybody claims having been attacked. Attacks always have been made by ‘unknown’ people. Conspiracy theories abound.

It is not very different from the political talks.

Today it emerged that a proposed political resolution acceptable to the Sudan government has been rejected by two rebel factions.  African Union and international mediators have extended the settlement deadline for two days.

via The Free West.

Previous related posts:

• Anarchy descends on Darfur
• African Union asks UN to take over Darfur peacekeeping
• Darfur approaching crisis point

Lisa Reich, a woman who used to cut herself as a teenager, has written a lengthy column in the London Telegraph asking for more understanding of "self-harmers".  Most of her piece recounts her youthful experiences with self-harm.  An obviously troubled and unhappy teenager, she'd already tried bulemia by age 14, but then she found sticking herself with a pin more fulfilling.  Later, she escalated to cutting herself with glass; but now after years of therapy, she says she's on the wagon.

I am a self harmer in the same way that an alcoholic will always be an alcoholic. From my experience, self-harm is misunderstood. It is greeted by raised eyebrows and mild disgust. It's seen, quite simply, as a bad thing.

Well, it isn't. It is a language that some people need in order to cope with their lives. Stopping people, telling them it is wrong, forces their hand, and that hand becomes more frantic, less careful.

Ms Reich connects this to the Royal College of Nursing conference discussion that I blogged last week.

At the Royal College of Nursing Congress last week, it was suggested that health-care workers should help people who repeatedly do harm to themselves to do so safely.

Chris Holley, a consultant nurse, who is involved in a pilot study at a hospital in Staffordshire that offers advice on how to self-harm safely, says that self-harmers have "a therapeutic need for self-injury. They should be supported, not chastised and made to feel as if they are hiding some sort of dirty affliction.

"It's not about handing out cutting implements to patients," Holley said. "It's about helping people who use self-harm to manage their feelings." According to Holley, for some self-harmers the cutting is a "safe coping strategy", which reduces suicidal thoughts. And, while the long-term goal is always to help people find "a better way of coping", it often does more harm to confiscate their "tools", and try to prevent them from harming themselves.

Self-harm may be an addiction or disease like alcoholism, but the attempt to draw an analogy between treatment for alcoholics and treatment for self-harmers is clearly erroneous.  For the fact is that the therapeutic approach Ms Reich and Ms Holley recommend for self-harmers is not taken with alcoholics.  Nurses and other health professionals do not advise and enable habitual drinkers to drink "safely".

I agree that people who cut and burn themselves deliberately and repeatedly need serious therapy.  I also agree that judgmental condemnation is generally counter-productive and self-harmers need to be spoken to with care and consideration.  Nevertheless, a clear message that cutting yourself is harmful and a sign of mental unbalance needs to be articulated.  On no account, moreover, should health professionals enable anyone to harm themselves.  That applies to self-harm with knives and matches and scalding water just as with alcohol.

Do nurses or social workers think it a good idea to dispense alcohol to alcoholics?  Could that be justified by saying “It's not about handing out liquor to patients.  It's about helping people who use liquor to manage their feelings"?  Is habitual drunkenness viewed as a “safe coping strategy” that reduces suicidal thoughts?  I think not.

What is the nursing profession coming to?

Previous related post: “Safe self-harm?”

Chinese Christians need Bibles, but some folks keep sending prosperity gospel material instead.  One house church leader is not pleased.

He’s got glasses as thick as coke bottles, and dusty as old coke bottles, but his hair is shining from hair cream and there’s hardly a wrinkle on his 75-year-old face. He’s a house church leader in the southern city of Kunming. Last year he began to develop a problem — he kept tripping as he went outside his door. “Last summer, visitors kept leaving Christian literature at my door step, bags and bags of it.”

If it were good literature, he would not mind so much. “It’s dreadful stuff, written by prosperity gospel preachers of America, which is so unhelpful in a Chinese context right now, where we need sensible teaching on healing, not extremist heresy.”

What bugs him even more is that none of the deliverers have the courage to ring his doorbell and ask him if he wants to receive the material. Perhaps they already know his answer.

He knows what to do with that drivel.

“If anyone is short on fuel for their fire, I give them the books. Otherwise I have to lug them onto a bus and go outside the city, and then burn them myself.”

Who would be so dim as to risk their own safety, and that of this (unnamed) Christian leader, smuggling books into China that the intended recipients don't even want to read?

via The Wittenburg Door Newsletter, which calls the furtive literature drop-off "drive-by evangelism".

The collect for today, The Feast Day of Saint Philip and Saint James, Apostles, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

O Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life; Grant us perfectly to know thy Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life; that, following the steps of thy holy Apostles, Saint Philip and Saint James, we may stedfastly walk in the way that leadeth to eternal life; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St James 1:1-12
The Gospel: St John 14:1-14

The synoptic gospels mention St Philip only in lists of the twelve disciples (Matthew 10:2-4; Mark 3:14-19; Luke 6:13-16).  His name appears in fifth place after the two pairs of brothers, Peter and Andrew, James and John.  In John's Gospel, however, several incidents involving Philip are recorded.

St Philip was from Bethsaida in Galilee and may have been a follower of John the Baptist when John pointed out Jesus as the Lamb of God.  Jesus called Philip to follow him the day after he had called St Peter and St Andrew.  Philip then encouraged Nathanael (usually identified with Bartholomew) to follow Jesus as well.

At the feeding of the 5000, Jesus asks Philip where bread could be purchased to feed the crowd.  Philip replies that two hundred denarii (a denarius was about a day's wage) would not buy enough bread to feed them all.  When some Greeks wanted to meet Jesus, they approached Philip first.  At the Last Supper, after Jesus spoke of knowing the Father, Philip asks to be shown the Father.  Jesus replies, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father".

Philip is present with the other disciples in the upper room awaiting the Holy Spirit.  He is not mentioned again in the New Testament, and nothing is known for certain about his later activities.  There are some early traditions; however, some of the traditions may reflect confusion between Philip the Apostle and Philip the Deacon and Evangelist who appears later in Acts (Acts 6:5; 8:4-8, 36-40; 21:8).

The most probable tradition about St Philip seems to be that he preached in Greece and Phrygia, where he was crucified upside down at Hierapolis c. AD 80.  His remains were later brought to Rome and placed in the Basilica of the Twelve Apostles.

The first problem in writing about the life of St James is: Which James is this?  In his Christian Biographies, James Kiefer points out that the New Testament refers to “at least two persons named James, probably at least three, and perhaps as many as eight.”  Two of the apostles were named James, known since early church tradition as St James the Greater and St James the Less (most probably meaning, the younger).  The former was the son of Zebedee and brother of St John the Apostle; the latter the son of Alphaeus.  St James the Greater was martyred by King Herod as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles; his feast day is 25 July.

James son of Alphaeus is sometimes identified with the James whose mother Mary, the wife of Clopas, stood by the cross of Jesus.  (See also Mark 15:40, which refers to “Mary the mother of James the younger”.)  He is often identified with James the Lord’s brother, who is regarded as the first bishop or Patriarch of Jerusalem.  Sometimes he is also associated with the writer of the Epistle of James.  Church tradition generally agrees that James the bishop of Jerusalem, also known as “James the Just”, wrote the epistle bearing his name, although some take the view that it was written by St James the Greater.  In former times, St James the Less was commonly acknowledged to be the same person as James the Just, but today this is no longer universally accepted.

Since a reading from the Epistle of St James is set for today, however, the Book of Common Prayer appears to assume that James the Less is indeed the same as James the Just, the writer of the epistle.  Also, the Traditional Anglican Church Calendar at hand does not include a separate feast day for James the Just, implying that today is his feast day.  This post will consider St James the Less and James the Just, the brother of the Lord, separately without assuming one view or the other.

If St James the Less is identified neither with James the Just nor with the writer of the epistle, then we know almost nothing about him.  He is named only in lists of disciples appearing in the three synoptic gospels (Matthew 10:2-4; Mark 3:16-19; Luke 6:13-16) and the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:13).  He is believed to have been stoned to death for preaching Jesus in Jerusalem c AD 62, by order of the Sanhedrin.

James, the Lord’s brother, is named in two lists of the siblings of Jesus; he is not mentioned in Luke’s Gospel, John’s Gospel, or in the early chapters of Acts.  Then, at Acts 12:17, he is referred to as a recognised and respected leader of the church.  At the Council of Jerusalem, his words are received as an authoritative summary and consensus of the council’s deliberations.  He appears several times thereafter as the leader of the church at Jerusalem (Acts 21:18; Galatians 1:19; 2:9, 12; 1 Corinthians 15:7). 

The Jewish historian Josephus says that James was respected by the Pharisees for his ascetism and piety, but the high priest took advantage of an interval between Roman governors to have him put to death c AD 62.  His death is also reported by Hegessipus, one of the first church historians, who calls him “the Just” and records many examples of his holiness.

The epistle of St James is concerned with the way of life engendered by Christian faith.  Perhaps most importantly, the epistle corrects a perversion of St Paul‘s teaching that justification is by faith alone.  James denies that Christian life without works is possible; faith shows its presence by works.  (Paul says much the same thing at Romans 6:15-23.)

St Philip and St James are closely associated in the church calendar because their relics were supposedly brought to Rome together and housed in the Church of the Holy Apostles.  According to an ancient inscription there, the church was originally dedicated to St Philip and St James.