Magic Statistics

Three new pages of historical information have been added to the Diocese of Yukon website.  They can be accessed via links at the bottom of the right-hand column on the home page.

"Bishops of the Diocese of Yukon" has a photo and brief biographical notes on each of the diocese’s bishops.  The first Bishop of Yukon was the Rt Rev William Carpenter Bompas (1834-1906), "The Apostle of the North".  Second was The Rt Rev Isaac O Stinger (1866-1934), renowned as "The Bishop Who Ate His Boots".

The present 10th bishop, also 2nd Archbishop and Metropolitan of BC and Yukon, is The Most Rev Terry Buckle, who will retire at the end of 2008.

The second new page shows photos and biographical information on the men who have served as "Rectors of Christ Church parish, Whitehorse".  The present rector is The Very Rev Peter Williams, 25th rector of Christ Church Cathedral and 4th Dean of Yukon.  I am privileged to serve as his Rector’s Warden.

The third and final page presents a tribute to The Ven Arthur Privett, a remarkable and much-loved man who has ministered in Yukon for over fifty years.  He served as rector of Christ Church for almost 13 years and was Archdeacon of the Klondike when he retired.  After working with parishes in northern BC and Yukon for many years, he became Honourary Assistant at Christ Church in 1980, a position he still holds.  In July 2007, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Archdeacon Privett’s ministry in the Diocese of Yukon.

Previous related posts:

• Great-grandson of The Bishop Who Ate His Boots
• Travelling Bishop Stringer Exhibition

This traditional bluegrass gospel song has been recorded by the Stanley Brothers, Bill Munroe, Ricky Skaggs, and many others.  Dylan’s performance was recorded 12 June 1999 in Portland, Oregon. 

h/t: Dylan Channel 

Anti-Christian violence in Orissa, India, continues into its seventh day.  It is being reported that several are dead or missing, hundreds of churches and houses have been torched, and thousands have fled for safety to government relief camps and even into the jungle.

Over one thousand Christians, including priests, nuns, women and children, have fled to the jungles of India's Orissa State where deadly anti-Christian violence entered its seventh day, a church official told BosNewsLife Sunday, December 30.

"The situation is still under tension," in Orissa's communal clash-stricken district of Kandhama, said Leena Joseph a missionary nun of the Catholic St. Joseph order in Orissa, after Hindu extremists' attacks killed at least nine Christians this week and injured many more.   

"Church leaders and minority Christians have lost faith in the government and police for having failed to protect the minority community," she added, referring to the Christians hiding in jungles. "The government has always passive, inactive and apathetic when it comes to Christians and their welfare," the nun added.

Associated Press reports that police are searching for seven Christian teenage girls who have gone missing.

Yesterday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for an independent inquiry into the rampage, saying it is the latest manifestation of a long-standing anti-Christian campaign by extremist Hindu groups.

“The Orissa government should have addressed this problem before it became violent,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, senior researcher for the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. “The authorities are still failing to react quickly enough, and now ordinary people are being attacked.” Right-wing Hindu organizations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal have been promoting anti-Christian propaganda in Orissa because they want the state’s Christians, most of them members of tribal groups, to convert to Hinduism. These groups accuse Christian missionaries of forcing tribal people and low-caste Hindus to convert to Christianity. In January 1999, Hindu militants in Orissa trapped Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in their car and burned them alive.  

HRW suggests that, if the central government does not act to stem the violence, punish the instigators, and check religious hatred, India’s status as an officially secular state will be put at risk.

Previous related posts:

• Anti-Christian violence in India enters third day
• “Worst ever Christmas” for Christians in Orissa, India
• Another UK Hindu leader tells Christians to stop evangelising in India
• Christian converts “lose their right to be Indian”
• Hindu extremists acting more like Islamic jihadists all the time

Malaysia’s Ministry of Internal Security threatened the Catholic weekly Herald newspaper with non-renewal of its publishing licence because the publication uses the word “Allah” in its Malay-language section.  The ministry insisted that “Allah” was reserved for the exclusive use of Muslims.

After the Catholic archbishop and an evangelical church group sued, the ministry abruptly reversed itself.  Asia News reports.

Fr Lawrence Andrew, the Herald’s editor, told AsiaNews that Sunday morning, 30 December, at 10 am, he received a letter dated 28 December from the Ministry of Internal Security renewing the paper’s permit for 2008.

“This letter places no restrictions whatsoever and includes the permit for all the languages, including the Bahasa Malaysia Segment,” he said.
. . .
The Ministry’s position was anti-historical. According to a great many scholars and academics the term ‘Allah’ has been used by Arab Christians in the Middle East long before the birth of Islam and that the latter received the word from Christians.

Let’s hope that Malaysian Islamic leaders don’t make a commotion over this common-sense decision.

Previous related posts:

• Churches sue Malaysian government over prohibition of word “Allah”
• Malaysian Catholic newspaper told to stop using the word “Allah”
• Malaysian church may have been set up by Muslim mufti

The collect for today, the Sunday After Christmas-Day, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin; Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who llveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end.  Amen.

The Epistle: Galatians 4:1-7
The Gospel: St Matthew 1:18-25 

Artwork: Rembrandt, The Dream of St Joseph, 1650-55, Oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

Even before the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada had issued an advisory against non-essential travel to Pakistan.  The advisory has since been updated to include the news that Ms Bhutto was killed in Rawalpindi on 27 December, and CBC suddenly thinks it’s headline material.

Avoid non-essential travel to Pakistan: Ottawa

From the Pakistan travel report posted at the government agency’s website:

1. RECENT UPDATES

The level of Travel Warning in this report has not changed.

Section 2 has been updated.

Section 2 contains a brief summary of the volatile situation in Pakistan.  It does indeed sound like a place to avoid, but then it was before.

h/t: Proud To Be Canadian

Fallout continues from the Malaysian government’s decision to reserve the word "Allah" for the exclusive use of Muslims, even though Arabic-speaking Christians have been calling God Allah for centuries.  An evangelical Christian church and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur have sued the government.

A Malaysian church has sued the government for banning the import of Christian books containing the word "Allah," alleging it is unconstitutional and against freedom of religion.

The Sabah Evangelical Church of Borneo is also challenging the government for declaring that the word "Allah" - which means God in the Malay language - can only be used exclusively by Muslims, the church's lawyer, Lim Heng Seng, said Thursday.

The leader of the opposition in Malaysia’s parliament points out that Christians have been using the word "Allah" since before Islam came to exist.

"Malaysia is probably the only nation where the term Allah by Christians to refer to God is prohibited," parliamentary opposition leader Lim Kit Siang said in a statement, adding that the term was never banned even in the Middle East.

"The term Allah was used to refer to God by Arabic-speaking Christians before Arabic-speaking Muslims existed," he said.

The government clampdown could force Kuala Lumpur-based "Herald - the Catholic Weekly" newspaper to lose its publishing permit if it failed to drop the word Allah in its publication, the publisher said.

The publisher, the Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur, said on Thursday it had filed a lawsuit challenging the state order.

Malaysian Christians regard the edict as further evidence that the government caters to the Muslim population at the expense of the rights of Christians and other religious minorities.

Previous related posts:

• Malaysian Catholic newspaper told to stop using the word “Allah”
• Egyptian and Malaysian governments disapprove of Bibles
• Malaysian media forbidden to report debate over Islamic state
• Secret Christian converts in Malaysia

UPDATE (30 Dec.): The government has backed down.

The Anglican Province of Central Africa may have sacked The Rt Rev Nolbert Kunonga as Bishop of Mugabe Harare, but the news doesn’t seem to have registered with all Zimbabwe Anglicans.

Two months ago, The Rt Rev Dr Sebastian Bakare, retired Bishop of Manicaland, was appointed acting Bishop of Harare for a year while a permanent replacement is found.  Earlier this week, services in at least two Harare parishes were disrupted by supporters of Bp Kunonga.  Police had to be called to both churches.

Anglican parishioners in Marlborough, Harare, had to abandon their Christmas church service on Tuesday when a row erupted between supporters of the former bishop of Harare diocese, Nolbert Kunonga. and its interim head, Bishop Sebastian Bakare.

Eyewitnesses said a priest suspected of being an agent of the government's Central Intelligence Organization beat up a parishioner who was praying for the well-being of Bishop Bakare, and the service was abandoned after police were called in.

Some congregation members said they have resolved to stop collecting offerings.

The Borrowdale, Harare, Anglican church was also said to have been in an uproar on Sunday when the head of the parish barred Bishop Bakare from leading mass, resulting in intervention by the police.

Last month, Bp Kunonga forged correspondence stating that Bp Bakare rejected the appointment because the pay and perks were inadequate and got the story published in the Mugabe mouthpiece The Harare Herald.

Bp Bakare blames church leadership, including Archbishop of Central Africa Bernard Malango, for allowing Kunonga to hang on as bishop for as long as he did.

Previous related posts:

• Bishop Kunonga: Church must support Mugabe policies
• Bishop Kunonga blocked food shipments to Zimbabwe
• Anglican bishops support Mugabe after Catholics call for his departure
• Bishop cancels Sunday services for his anniversary
• Renegade Anglican bishop in Zimbabwe

UPDATE (29 Dec.): Last night, police broke up a fight at another Anglican church in Harare.

podBible software installs the text of the New Testament (English Standard Version) on your iPod video, iPod Nano, or iPod Classic.  It comes in Mac and Windows versions.

Best of all, it’s free.

h/t: Thinking Christian

The ruins of a 1500-year-old Christian church were discovered in the Iraqi desert south-west of Baghdad in the 1970s.  Now a government expert in antiquities is trying to raise funds to preserve and restore the Al-Aqiser church.

"It is a place of worship, a church, and without doubt, the oldest church of the East," said Hussein Yasser, the head of the antiquities department of the province of Karbala.

"According to our research, it was build 120 years before the emergence of Islam in the region," Yasser said as he took an AFP correspondent on a tour of the site.

Islam emerged in the Arabian peninsula in 622, or, by Yasser's account, 15 years after Al-Aqiser was built in a region teeming with Christian tribes.

In time, Karbala overshadowed it and became a key Muslim Shiite pilgrimage destination, while across the region Christian communities began to recede.

Deserted by its worshippers, Al-Aqiser slowly sank into the sands and would have been totally forgotten had it not been for a team of Iraqi archeologists who stumbled on its ruins in the 1970s.

The church was built facing Jerusalem with foundations measuring 75 metres long by 15 metres wide.

An archway with inscriptions in Syriac has already been excavated.  Mr Yasser is convinced that an ancient city lies buried beneath the sands.

Previous related post: Iraq’s chief archaeologist quits, flees religious persecution

The collect for today, the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

O Almighty God, who out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast ordained strength, and madest infants to glorify thee by their deaths; Mortify and kill all vice in us, and so strengthen us by thy grace, that by the innocency of our lives, and constancy of our faith even unto death, we may glorify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For The Epistle: Revelation 14:1-5
The Gospel: St Matthew 2:13-18

Today is an appropriate day to remember the victims of abortion. 

More on The Holy Innocents here.

Artwork: Matteo di Giovanni, Massacre of the Innocents, 1488, Oil on canvas, Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples.

A new research project has found that Canadians living in cities in the Atlantic provinces tend to rate their quality of life higher than do Canadians in other cities.  Of the top ten cities, five are in Eastern Canada.

According to the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Canadians are most likely to be satisfied with the quality of life in places like Saint John, Moncton, N.B., and Charlottetown, all of which placed in the top five of a survey of 18 Canadian cities.
. . .
[K]nowing your neighbours - and trusting those around you - is a key reason why a city like Saint John tops the list, said John Helliwell, a University of British Columbia economist who led the research project.

Prof Helliwell also noted a negative correlation between prevailing affluence and level of life satisfaction.  Residents of Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto had lower quality of life ratings and lower levels of trust.  He attributed the latter to rapid growth through in-migration.

Helliwell said the findings suggest that cities with a static population and deep roots are happier places.

In view of my hopes and plans for change of residence next year, I am happy to hear that Eastern Canadians are generally satisfied with their community life.  (Of course, I’ll be a new resident and therefore likely to reduce overall trust and quality of life.)

Note: The study was carried out by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, which appears to have no information about the project at their website.  This blog post is based entirely on the CBC news story, which see for the list of the top 10 Canadian cities.