Magic Statistics

Recent estimates indicate that, although 72% of residents of England consider themselves Christian, very few of them actually go to church. Of those that attend church regularly, however, about 40% are evangelicals.

Rev Joel Edwards (at right), General Director of the Evangelical Alliance, comments.

"There are evangelicals right across the Protestant spectrum as well as evangelicals within some pockets of Catholicism itself," he notes.
. . .
Thanks to the broad appeal of the gospel message to diverse groups of people, Edwards says evangelical churches in the U.K. are thriving.

"Anywhere where one sees that kind of combination of people who have confidence in the cross, confidence in the Bible, and confidence in our mission to the world, the church remembers why it's here," he says, "and very often that leads to an explosion of life in our liturgy and worship, our evangelism, our personal witness, and our commitment to the poor and the marginalized."

That kind of confidence seems to be flagging in the Church of England and faltering badly in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

Previous related posts:

• Anglican Church of Canada: Fewer members, less giving, more bishops
• Evangelical presence grows as mainline denominations shrink
• Anglican Church of Canada finally confronting losses
• Anglican Church of Canada on the road to extinction

Journalists from all over the world are attending the Lord (Conrad) Black trial in Chicago.  Lord Black and three co-defendants are accused of stealing millions of dollars by negotiating “non-compete payments” from purchasers of newspapers their company formerly owned.  This week testimony is being given by former Illinois governor Jim Thompson, who sat on the board of Lord Black’s newspaper empire when the controversial payments were negotiated.

James Bone of The Times of London says Mr Thompson’s testimony was immensely detrimental to Lord Black’s defence.

Jurors in the fraud trial of Lord Black of Crossharbour heard damaging testimony yesterday from a longtime local governor against the former Telegraph chairman.
. . .
Mr Thompson, who served as chairman of the newspaper conglomerate’s audit committee, said that he had not approved millions of dollars of the suspect payments.

Mark Steyn, who is blogging the trial for Maclean’s magazine, has a radically different take.

This morning must count as one of the most pitiful performances in public by any United States Governor, as Jim Thompson fell back time and again on his assertion that he had "skimmed" the relevant documents before approving them.
 
"I didn't say I didn't read it, I said I skimmed it."
 
"Skimming is reading?" sneered [defence lawyer] Mr [Edward] Greenspan.
 
"Skimming is a form of reading," insisted Governor Thompson. Counsel attempted to press him on the precise contours of this form of reading: surely if he was skimming, he would have concentrated on the parts of the documents most relevant to his role as Chairman of the Audit Committee. Which suggests that, even skimming, one of these eleven references to payments he approved (and which he now says he didn't approve) would have been seen by him.

Back to Mr Bone.

The former governor said that he had only “skimmed” the company’s financial documents because they were long. “I should have read them word by word. I did not. I skimmed them,” he said.
. . .
The former governor was confronted with a 2001 10-k financial filing by the company with the US Government that said in a footnote that some $15 million had been approved.

“That is what it says, but it’s not true,” Mr Thompson replied.

After watching Mrs [Marie-Josee] Kravis giving hostile evidence, Lord Black growled: “I don’t know how anyone can believe any of that stuff.”

Me neither.

A band of jihadist vigilantes has emerged in northern Nigeria, the area of the country governed by shari’a law.  Calling themselves the “Nigerian Taliban”, they believe the nation is not following the Qur’an closely enough.  They have attacked police stations, political leaders, fellow Muslims, and Christians.

The Nigerian Taliban first emerged five years ago demanding "full sharia" in the 12 states in the north that introduced Islamic law after the end of military rule in 1999. Attacks on symbols of the federal government followed, particularly the police.

The latest assault sent a new wave of fear through Kano's minority Christian community, which lives with one eye on sharia and inter-religious violence that has caused tens of thousands of deaths in recent years with periodic massacres across the country.

Islamist attacks on the Christian areas of Kano have left hundreds dead at a time. In Plateau state, human rights groups have recorded nearly 60,000 religious killings of Muslims and Christians in the past six years. Tens of thousands more have fled their homes.

After Kano’s government acted to neutralise extremist Islamist schools, the Nigerian Taliban accused the state's leaders of trying to “Christianise” Islam.

h/t: International Christian Concern

Previous related posts:

• Nigerian boy escapes Muslim kidnappers, returns to parents
• Despite persecution, Nigerian church flourishes
• Muslim pupils kill Christian teacher in Nigeria
• Islamic school built on church-owned site without permission

Several hotels in (where else?) California want to tap into the Gaia devotee environmentalist market.  They have equipped their rooms with waterless urinals, solar lighting, and recycled paper.  In the forefront, as one might expect, is a hotel named after Mother Earth.

Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of “An Inconvenient Truth,” former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming.

Gore replaces God.  The mind boggles.

Does the Gaia Hotel know that Mr Gore pushes creationism along with his global warming schtick?  A Gore fan attended one of his revival meetings public lectures recently and couldn’t believe what he saw and heard.

[T]he guy's entire presentation exists in order to present people with the scientific data showing that human-caused climate change is a fact. He does his very best to include references in all of the slides, showing to any thinking person that this data is not made up, that it comes from the forefront of our scientific research (there was many slides containing data from Science journal, and a few from Nature).

At the same time, he tarnishes his beautifully crafted presentation by not only stating his belief in creationism - but by placing the words "Adam and Eve" right on the slide (which is actually a scientific graph) as a caption explaining the beginnings of mankind.

Something doesn't add up here. On one hand, he is using science to predict the disastrous outcome of our current actions and rally support for taking proactive measures to make sure bad things don't happen, but on the other hand, he is clinging to stone-age beliefs that another very important area of science has proven wrong (that we humans evolved from other forms of life, and that every organism on Earth has a common ancestor).

Sounds like the Gaia Hotel would do just as well to go back to the Bible.

Cartoon by the award-winning Matt Pritchett of the London Telegraph.

h/t: Melissa Whitworth and small dead animals

Previous related posts:

• Globe and Mail makes fun of Al Gore
• Get your sin offsets here
• Your carbon footprint can make you crazy
• Heed the Goracle
• Will Gaia have her revenge?

Two headlines from today’s Whitehorse Star:

• Collision breaks young cyclist’s ankle
• Cycle to workplace, city urges

The headlines are found adjacent to each other on the Star’s news page.  Here’s a screen shot.  (Click on image for larger view.)

Check out the small town newspaper's featured photo while you're at it.