Fr Stephen Smuts

First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.

The All India Christian Council has condemned an indictment issued by a Sharia law court in Kashmir that charges two priests with blasphemy by enticing Muslims to convert to Christianity.

On 11 January 2012 Muslim leaders in the Northern Indian state issued a statement saying that “it was proved beyond doubt that the accused” the vicar of All Saints Church in Srinigar, the Rev Chander Mani Khanna of the Church of North India, “along with other accomplices was luring Muslim people to change their religion.”

A second priest, Fr. Jim Borst, a Roman Catholic missionary who has worked in Kashmir for 46 years, was also charged with converting Muslims to Christianity.

“The Kashmir situation is going through a critical phase and if such elements are not brought to book it will have a serious and negative impact on the (Kashmiri Muslim) society,” the Muslim leaders said.

“It is shocking and surprising that the state government was allowing such activities. Kashmir society will not tolerate such activities at all and we stand united against such elements,” Mufti Muhammad Nasir-ul-Islam said.  The sentence from the court would be announced shortly, he added.

On 19 Nov 2011 Mr. Khanna was arrested by the Jammu & Kashmir police on charges of fomenting civil unrest.  He was released on 1 Dec 2011 and has since left the state for fear for his life.

However, Christian leaders have denounced the indictment stating that Sharia courts have no civil standing.  In a statement released on 13 January 2012, the All India Christian Council (AICC) said it was “deeply disturbed” by the Sharia court’s actions.  “Such statements can encourage extremist elements to indulge in violence,” the Council said.

“It was hoped that religious and secular authorities, and the state government, would show maturity and responsibility,” the AICC said, “keeping in view the delicately poised public peace situation” in Kashmir.

The “Church does not accept as genuine any conversion brought about by fraud or force,” the AICC said, noting that a fact finding team which went to Srinagar shortly after the arrest of Mr. Khanna and “interviewed Church personnel, Ulema, school, authorities and the police, found no evidence of force or fraud in baptisms that have been carried out over a period of time. Each baptism has been proved to be voluntary.”

The head of the AICC, Dr John Dayal, said it “devolves on the Jammu and Kashmir Government, religious leaders and people of goodwill in the Kashmir valley to ensure that the nights of minorities are respected, their welfare assured, and communal harmony strengthened in the region which so desperately requires and environment of peace for its development and well being.”

Source

 Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

- Acts 2:38

Writes Joel at Unsettled Christianity:

For instance, this site which sees signs of the supposed End in everything, criticizes an old statement by Pope Benedict in which he upholds long standing Catholic Doctrines, well since Vatican II anyway, that Protestant Churches aren’t really Churches but are Christians. See, they have this funny notion that I know that no one else has (that’s sarcasm, folks) that there is only one Church. Using Logic, this means that other Churches aren’t, not that Protestants aren’t Christians. If there is only one Church, by simply logic, then you can have only one church, right? Now, look at the site again. What he does he call the Pope? The Beast and the Enemy, placing Roman Catholicism alongside that of Islam.

This is just stupid. Whomever is writing that site needs to repent and never post on the internet again as penance.

An even bigger form of denial than about the causes of Europe’s financial collapse.

Worth giving a read. To do so, click here.

See also: Can You Come to Jesus Without Church?

YouTube videos go viral all the time, but sermons rarely do.

Enter Jefferson Bethke, a young “spoken-word” poet who recently posted the video “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus.” It has been viewed more than 10 million times in the past 10 days.

The video opens with an eerie soundtrack and the phrase “Jesus>Religion” in a stark, white typeface. His poem begins, “What if I told you, Jesus came to abolish religion?”

In a polished, hip style, he continues with such controversial questions for four minutes: “If religion is so great, why has it started so many wars? Why does it build huge churches, but fails to feed the poor?” Mr. Bethke describes religion as no more than “behavior modification” and “a long list of chores.” This leads him to conclude, “Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrums.” And his grand finale: “So know I hate religion, in fact I literally resent it.

Other YouTube users have posted response videos, and countless bloggers have commented on the quality of his poetry, the sharpness of the production and the errors in his theology. Among the most ardent critics are Catholics who see Catholic-bashing in Mr. Bethke’s attack against organized religion, particularly in his suggestion that religion is “just following some rules.”

On his blog “Bad Catholic,” Marc Barnes highlights Mr. Bethke’s indictments of religion for building huge churches at the expense of the poor and telling “single Moms God doesn’t love them if they’ve had a divorce.” Though Mr. Barnes agrees with some of the poem, he writes, “I can’t help but think, in the midst of all this, that this hating-religion-loving-Jesus thing is the logical consequence of Protestantism”…

… Mr. Bethke… ”perfectly captures the mood, and in my mind the confusion, of a lot of earnest, young Christians” who interpret the word religion to mean “self-righteousness, moral preening, and hypocrisy.”

… The notion that “Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship” has been echoing through the sanctuaries of evangelical, and particularly nondenominational, churches since at least the 1970s.

Read it all here.

… advocating for a kind of Christianity that is free of the “bondage” of religion opens the door to dangerous theological anarchy that is all too common among young evangelicals and absolutely antithetical to biblical Christianity.