Magic Statistics

Pastor and chaplain The Rev Dr James Galyon has two excellent blogs of special interest to Christians.

Invictus Maneo, “I remain unconquered”, focuses on the persecuted church.  2 Worlds Collide presents a broader range of topics, from contemporary questions in theology to church history to Christian life and more.

Both blogs feature thoughtful content and attractive presentation.  Check ‘em out!

I learned a lot from James’s theological and historical discussion of cremation which, as he says, seems to be a frequently discussed issue among Christians these days. I found his argument persuasive, and I concur with his conclusion: "Lord willing, I will be buried."

Brad Drell has come into possession of the minutes of the April Vestry Meeting at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Blandville, and it’s not a pretty picture.  Here’s a snippet.

Under Old Business, Pastor Hamilton mentioned that the light bulb in his pulpit reading lamp is still burned out. Mrs. Woodstock asked him whether that was the reason he had embarrassed the whole congregation during the Psalm last Sunday. The Rector answered that it was.

Mrs. Blickensderfer said she thought the light-bulb problem had been remanded to the Building Committee.

Mr. Sholes said that no record of any such remandment appeared in the minutes of the March meeting.

Mrs. Blickensderfer said she didn’t think “remandment” was a word.

Mr. Fox thought that the pulpit was under the jurisdiction of the Worship and Music Committee.

Mrs. Yost thought that the lighting was the responsibility of the Evangelism Committee.

Mr. Fox wanted to know what sort of dunderhead thought lighting had anything to do with evangelism.

Read the whole thing.

Those minutes have given me second thoughts about my Rector’s Warden gig. I haven’t had major trouble so far, but now I realise how bad it could get.

Previous related posts:

• From the diary of a novice rector’s warden
• It’s all down hill from here for Christ Church, Whitehorse
• Christ Church Cathedral, Whitehorse, hits the skids

A rare event has occurred: The United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) has issued a report faulting a nation over its human rights record.

Adrian Severin, the UN Human Rights Council's special rapporteur on Belarus, on June 12 noted a steady deterioration in the human rights situation in Belarus in 2006, Belapan reported. Presenting his report in Geneva, Severin stressed that all his recommendations have been ignored by the Belarusian government, which he said has flatly refused to cooperate with him for three consecutive years. "The present report demonstrates that Belarus does not respect its obligations under the international human rights instruments to which it has adhered," Severin said.

Mr Severin recommends that the UN take very serious action against Belarus, calling for not one but two further high-level investigations.  He wants one investigation to be conducted by a group of legal experts convened by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the other by the UN secretary-general himself.

Before more investigating can occur, however, the HRC must act on the recommendations.  Given the HRC’s dismal record on policing human rights, I wouldn’t hold my breath.  Earlier this year, the Council voted to shut down investigations in Iran and Uzbekistan.  If Belarus plays the game right, perhaps it too will receive a violate-human-rights-free card from the HRC.

Belarus denounced Mr Severin and said that his office should be abolished.

Syarhey Aleynik, Belarus's permanent representative to the United Nations and other international organizations based in Geneva, called on the UN Human Rights Council to abolish the mandate of the special rapporteur on Belarus. According to Aleynik, Severin's report is a "product of an incompetent and politically prejudiced expert who is directly interested in creating a negative image of our country."

Isn’t a human rights investigator supposed to paint a negative picture of countries that abuse human rights?  Isn’t that a requirement of the job?

Previous related posts:

• Belarusian Pentecostal church raided on Pentecost
• UN Human Rights Council decides to ignore Iran and Uzbekistan
• UN Human Rights Council votes against identifying rights-abusing nations
• Belarus: Europe’s most oppressively anti-religious nation

Philip Jenkins, one of today’s leading scholars of world Christianity, disagrees with the view that Christianity in Europe is on the ropes and on the verge of dying off.  Au contraire, argues Dr Jenkins, it’s making a comeback.

He agrees that decades of decline have left European Christianity in a terribly weakened condition, and that the surge of Islam, particularly in southern Europe, is ominous.  But he also sees clear signs of growing strength.

Popular new religious movements within Roman Catholicism have brought renewed vitality.  There are even signs of hope in the Church of England.

The most active sections of the Church of England today are the evangelical and charismatic parishes that have, in effect, become megachurches in their own right. These parishes have been incredibly successful at reaching out to a secular society that no longer knows much of anything about the Christian faith. Holy Trinity Brompton, a megaparish in Knightsbridge, London, that is now one of Britain’s largest churches, is home to the amazingly popular “Alpha Course,” a means of recruiting potential converts through systems of informal networking aimed chiefly at young adults and professionals. As with the Catholic movements, the course works because it makes no assumptions about any prior knowledge: Everyone is assumed to be a new recruit in need of basic teaching. Nor does the recruitment technique assume that people live or work in traditional settings of family or employment. The Alpha Course is successfully geared for postmodern believers in a postindustrial economy.

Huge growth of African and Afro-Caribbean Christian communities in London and across England is also encouraging.

Europe, says Jenkins, is rediscovering its Christian roots.  The influential leftist German philosopher Jürgen Habermas recently declared:

Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.

Christianity in Europe faces a struggle against Islam, but it’s not down for the count just yet.  It has already begun to rise again; God willing, it will continue to do so.

Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies and History at Penn State University, is author of The Next Christendom: The Rise of Global Christianity (2002), and The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (2006).  His next book, God’s Continent, focuses on Muslim-Christian relations in contemporary Europe.

h/t: Times Online Comment Central

Previous related posts:

• Muslim converts in Germany under threat
• Evangelicals thriving in UK
• Face veil “contrary to achievements of European civilisation”
• British moral principles derive from Christianity