Where Have All the Christians Gone?

So asks Charles Coulombe in Taki’s Magazine:

Just in time for Christmas, the latest  British census shows that since 2001, when 72% of the UK’s denizens claimed  to be Christians, the quotient has dropped thirteen percentage points. Muslims  have increased in number from 1.55 million to 2.7 million. The percentage of  those who claim to have no religion leaped from 15% to 25%. This opens up some  very serious issues.

Institutionally, the United Kingdom remains wedded to the varieties of  Christianity her rulers imposed at the Reformation. The Churches of England  and Scotland  remain established; the Queen  remains head  of one and chief  layperson of the other. The monarchy is closely tied to its religious  bodies, what with royal  peculiars, chapels  royal, and such ceremonies as the Royal  Maundy Service, the Epiphany, and above all the Coronation.  Her Majesty’s Christmas  Message is often far more inspiring than many a church sermon. Chosen  by the government, the Archbishop of Canterbury acts as a sort of national  chaplain, while he and some of his brother bishops sit  in the House of Lords. The Speaker of the House of Commons has his own chaplain,  and prayers for  the Queen are read at the beginning of each day’s session in both Houses of  Parliament. Every city and town in the realm has a civic church where an annual  service is held for the benefit of mayor and council, and each regiment of  the army has its own  prayer. During this season of Advent, it seems that every imaginable  institution from Land’s End to John O’Groats has its own carol  service.

“The entire wealth of British and European culture is a  testament to Christianity’s truth, and all the atheists from Nietzsche to  Hitchens could not between them equal its beauty—though the Nazis and communists  have shown what European non-Christians in power can build.”

How then, in the face of all of this institutional piety, could Christianity  have been dealt such a blow in the last decade?

Do read on here.

 

Israel: Women of the Wall

Israeli security guards at the Western Wall on Friday searched women worshippers arriving at the holiest place where Jews can pray for a seemingly inoffensive object – the Jewish prayer shawl, which under the Orthodox tradition can be worn only by men.

Once the shawls were found, dozens of women had to deposit them before proceeding to pray in the section reserved for women. A few, who managed to sneak the shawls in under their coats and wrapped them around their shoulders, were promptly evicted or detained.

Similar scenes have played out almost a dozen times every year since the group known as Women of the Wall was first established nearly 25 years ago.

Its members have endured arrests, heckling and legal battles in a struggle to attain what they consider their inalienable right – to pray and worship at the Western Wall like men do.

Under Israel’s predominantly Orthodox Jewish tradition, only men may wear a prayer shawl, a skullcap and phylacteries. Liberal Reform Judaism, marginal in Israel but the largest denomination in the United States, allows women to practice the same way as men do in Orthodox Judaism: they may be ordained as rabbis, read from the Torah, the Jewish holy book, and wear prayer shawls.

The multi-denominational Women of the Wall adheres to that liberal stream. Since 1988, its members have come to the holy site 11 times a year to pray on the first day of the new Jewish month, except on the New Year.

The police know they are coming and are on the lookout. The group’s members have been repeatedly detained, as soon as they are perceived to be offending Orthodox sensibilities – such as carrying a Torah scroll or if they try to drape themselves in the shawls. They are usually released after a few hours.

They have never been charged – evidence, the women say, that what they are doing is not illegal.

“We want to have the ability to pray out loud, to wear a prayer shawl, to read the Torah. And we want to do it without fear at the Western Wall,” said Anat Hoffman, the group’s chairwoman…

Read on in the Huffington Post.

 

Fewer Postings for Theology / Religious Studies Positions

Via the Cardinal Newman Society:

A new study from the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature found that there are fewer jobs being posted for college professors in theology and religious studies than there were prior to the economy tanking in 2008. The number of postings in 2009 was down 46 percent from the previous year across American higher education. In addition, the data show that fewer of the positions that are being offered are tenure track. In 2008, 82 percent of the positions offered were tenure track, but that number dropped to 51 percent in 2009 and 61 percent in 2010.

The study does not speculate on the reasons for the declines, but they most likely have to do with the recession that began in 2008. Other reasons could include less emphasis on religion relative to other subject areas, or lower student enrollment in religion courses.

 

Happy Hanukkah

To those celebrating. This year Hanukkah falls between Sunset on the 8th December to nightfall on the 16 December.

Chag sameach.

Wikipedia has more on Hanukkah here.

 

Australian Catholic Bishops Approve ‘Ramadaan Prayer’

Australian Catholic Bishops Conference:

Prayer for Muslims

The annual celebration of the month of Ramadan provides an opportunity for members of the Catholic Church to pray for Muslims. An appropriate intercession to be included in the Prayers of the Faithful is suggested:

For our Muslim brothers and sisters, that by the bodily discipline of fasting and the spiritual devotion of their hearts, they find grace and favour in God’s eyes.

Taking inter-religious thought too far!

Brazil and the Rise of the Charismatic Evangelical Church

An interesting BBC podcasts:

It was once the case that Brazilians worshipped as one in the thousands of Catholic churches spread around this vast country. But a religious revolution is taking place, and a new dynamic form of charismatic Evangelical Christianity is taking over.

A quarter of Brazilians now worship in Evangelical churches, many of them practicing the Prosperity gospel which promises them happiness and fulfilment in return for a proportion of their wealth. And its wealth, along with power and influence, which the Catholic Church previously claimed as its own, is the result of this increased membership. Paulo Cabral investigates why Brazilians are turning from the Catholicism which has had a presence in Brazil for over 500 years, and how the charismatic churches have become so popular changing the way many Brazilians in some of the poorest areas of the country profess their faith and accumulating this vast wealth and political power along the way.

Give it a listen here (Mp3).

HT

 

Indomitable Sydney? The Challenge of Sydney Anglicanism

Religion and Ethics:

The famous Asterix the Gaul comic books that I read when I was a kid begin in this way.

“The year is 50 B.C. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely … One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders. And life is not easy for the Roman legionaries who garrison the fortified camps of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanam and Compendium …”

The Gauls gain their fabulous strength from a magic potion brewed by their druid, Getafix. But the secret of their ability to defy the odds, and the Romans, comes from somewhere else. They are possessed of a remarkable inner fortitude. They have an almost casual confidence about them that drives their opponents to distraction. They have a clear sense of shared identity in the face of what seems like insurmountable opposition. They love to eat wild boar.

The way the story of the Anglican diocese of Sydney has been told by her supporters and critics alike often sounds like the opening to Asterix. In the view of Melbourne journalist and Anglican laywoman Muriel Porter, for example, the evangelical variety of Anglicanism that in general characterizes the diocese of Sydney is defiantly peculiar.

As Porter reads it, an Anglicanism that is Catholic in liturgy and liberal in theology has triumphed everywhere. It is the dominant form, and reigns unchecked and unchallenged across Australia and even across the globe. This one small diocese of indomitable, very conservative and (to be frank) completely unhinged evangelical Anglicans holds out against the onward march of liberal Catholic Anglicanism. And life is, as a result, not easy for those who surround it and have to deal with it. Sydney’s commitment to lay presidency at the Lord’s Supper and its objection to the ordination of women to the priesthood are symptoms of the baffling and stubborn irrationality that characterizes the diocese. They simply get in the way of what would be a normal development in other places.

The same story can be told from within the gates of the Sydney Anglican village as well. While all around, Anglicanism has capitulated almost totally to the liberal, broad-church paradigm – with the exception a few parishes in each diocese that are allowed to remain traditional Anglo-Catholic or conservative evangelical – Sydney is the only diocese in which an evangelical form of Anglicanism holds sway. Alone it holds the torch against the onslaught of darkness. Alone it defies the complete capitulation of Anglican Christianity to Western cultural mores. Alone it holds to priority of Scripture over culture as authoritative for church belief and practice. Splendidly, nobly alone.

The uniqueness of Sydney Anglicanism…

Do read on here.

 

The Majority of the World’s ‘500 Most Influential Muslims’ Are In The USA

The Huff Post reports:

There are more Muslims from America than any other country on this year’s “The Muslim 500: The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims,” compiled by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, a respected think tank in Jordan, including two in the top 50.

Sheikh Hamza Yusuf Hanson, a California-born convert who founded Zaytuna College, an Islamic college in Berkeley, Calif., and is a leading Islamic authority in America, ranked No. 42, two places ahead of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an Islamic studies professor at George Washington University known for his work in Islamic philosophy.

America’s roughly 2.6 million Muslims are a tiny fraction of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, but they took 41 spots on the 500 list. Countries with the next highest number of names were Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom, with 25 Muslims each, followed by Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, with 24.

“Compared to the global Muslim population, the representation of U.S. Muslims in this list is disproportionate, but yet representative in the way they shape global discourse,” said Duke University Islamic studies professor Ebrahim Moosa.

The third annual compilation lists the winners according to 13 categories, including spiritual guides, Quran reciters, scholars, politicians, celebrities, sports figures, radicals, and media leaders. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah took the list’s No. 1 spot.

More names here.

 

Israel: Rockets Rain Down on Israel. Tensions Rise in the Middle East

Virtue Online:

Last night I was watching CNN and Jenny (5) said, “What are those? Rockets?” It was footage of the fighting between Hamas and the IDF. I answered (without thinking about it), “Yeah, they’re firing rockets at Israel,” and then quickly added, “But not here.”

So soldiers are being mobilized and it looks like foot soldiers will be going into Gaza.

In truly worrying news, a rocket from Gaza recently reached the suburbs of Tel Aviv, which is the hub of the entire country. That little coastal strip from Tel Aviv up through Haifa is where most of the population of this little country lives. (Israel is about the size of New Jersey, incidentally.) If the guys in Gaza get better missiles from Iran (which is where they are coming from) then you will start to see serious casualties on the Israeli side, and the government will not permit that.

In the past Egypt could more or less be counted on to make smuggling arms into Gaza hard. No more…

Meanwhile, the fighting in Syria is spilling over into the always-unstable country of Lebanon. And fighting among the various parties (and there are several, not just two) in Syria recently made the Israeli army fire the first warning shots in decades in the Golan cease-fire area. It appears that the Syrians had not intended to cross the cease-fire line, fortunately.

Our neighbors in Jordan, which has the reputation of being a stable country, have recently eliminated fuel subsidies, which has caused massive protests over there. A line has been crossed, in fact, in that some people are openly calling for the abdication of King Abdullah. If he does not abdicate, force will have to be used to suppress dissenting voices. If he does abdicate the monarchy will be abolished, or a sibling of his will become monarch. Either way, Jordan will go the way of Egypt and become much more Islamist-leaning in its politics and foreign relations.

In my e-mail inbox this morning I had a message from the US Embassy-consulates are closed today and the embassy hours have been reduced. Also, diplomats may not travel through the West Bank because of the instability in both Israel and Jordan. Jordan, meanwhile, is trying to figure out what to do with tens of thousands of refugees from Syria. Jordan does not even have enough food or water for its own population.

We have been living in the Middle East now for many years, and I’m quite used to the occasional instability or violence. But it was always isolated to this or that area. The instability is too widespread now. I’m not an alarmist, but I don’t see how any of this ends up happily. That having been said, I do not feel our family is in any imminent danger, I am glad to say.

Would you please pray for peace in the region? Pray that the local churches would be part of the solution and not just close their eyes and ears to these difficulties? And pray for us, that in the midst of all of this we would be people of light and hope and witnesses to the grace of our Creator and the love of our Redeemer.

 

Israel Will Do Everything for Orthodox Believers – Peres

OBL News:

Jerusalem – Israeli President Shimon Peres said he will always remember Russia’s exceptional role in the victory over fascism.

“I will never forget that Russia together with the allies emerged victorious from World War II, paying the dearest price for the victory – the lives of 30 million citizens who dealt the strongest blow on Nazi Germany and saved the world from a disaster,” Peres told Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia on Sunday.

“Therefore, the Red Army deserves the highest praise and honor. That war demonstrated vivid cooperation between the United States, Europe and Russia. Russia indeed saved the world from total annihilation. We will never forget that Russia saved our people, putting an end to gas chambers and crematoriums,” Peres said.

One third of the Jewish people perished in World War II, he said. About half a million Jews served in the Red Army and about 250,000 of them were killed in battles and 160,000 got high military awards and ranks, he said.

Israel profoundly respects the Russian Orthodox Church and other religions, he also said.

“We want to guarantee the safety of this religion, so Orthodox believers could pray according to their canons and rules. We will do everything we can for that and for ensuring their physical and spiritual peace,” he said.

The Russian Patriarch said that Russian-Israeli relations have reached “the highest point in the Israeli state’s history, which is largely due to political change observed in the late 20th century.”

No other non-Slavic country has so many people speaking the Russian language, he said. Following the “wise decision” to scrap visas between Russia and Israel, the number of Russian pilgrims has reached hundreds of thousands, Patriarch Kirill said.