by | Jul 24, 2023 | Uncategorized
For nearly two decades, mob violence has driven believers from their communities and upended their sense of security.
Since the beginning of May, ethnic and religious violence in Manipur, a state in northeast India, has resulted in the deaths of at least 142 people, the destruction of over 300 churches and hundreds of villages, and one of the largest violence-driven internal displacements in recent Indian history. A fact-finding team that visited earlier this month reported that the clashes were “state-sponsored,” and the violence has uprooted more than 65,000 people from their homes and forced them to seek shelter elsewhere.
India records the highest numbers of internal displacements annually, primarily due to natural disasters. But recent communal violence and persecution against religious minorities has wreaked havoc in numerous Indian states, including Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha.
While the government has an official legal framework for helping communities displaced by natural disasters and development projects, it has none for those displaced by violence or manmade conflict. Instead, the level of response has varied widely depending on public sympathy for the victims, media attention, and protests by those affected. Rehabilitation, including the provision of permanent shelter, jobs, and education, remains a significant challenge for the government and the church.
More than two months after the violence began in Manipur, at least 1,000 families are sheltering in Delhi, says L. Kamzamang, a pastor working with internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Manipur.
“Not only are most of the IDPs scattered in various cities and towns in India not wanting to go back to their homes, but young people who are in Manipur are planning to come out of Manipur,” said Kamzamang. “There is nothing to do there. There are …
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by | Jul 24, 2023 | Uncategorized
Isaiah Deye is elected to replace Joseph Ntombura, who was accused of mishandling church funds.
The Methodist Church in Kenya elected a new presiding bishop on July 20, three months after the last one was forced from leadership.
Isaiah Deye, 61, was elected with 76 percent of the vote at the 58th Annual Conference of the Church in Nairobi, raising hopes that recent turmoil and threats of schism will come to an end.
“I am greatly humbled and yet highly honored to be elected as the Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church in Kenya and accept your decision that I should ascend to the office of the Presiding Bishop,” Deye said in his acceptance speech on Friday. “I pledge to be a leader who will seek to serve rather than to be served, and a role model for all the clergy and laity.”
The bishop has led the church in an acting capacity since April, when Bishop Joseph Ntombura was removed from office due to allegations of mishandling church funds and investments in a hospital, a resort, and a national university.
The allegations had put Ntombura in conflict with other church leaders. Methodist churches across the country had begun to make moves to create their own autonomous conference.
Deye garnered 281 votes, a majority of the 366 ballots cast. The race included three other candidates. His closest rival, Catherine Mutua, garnered 35 votes.
Deye is the second presiding bishop from the country’s coast region, which includes the region’s capital, Mombasa. Most church leaders have come from Meru, a region of Eastern Kenya.
Deye has said he hopes to be an example of Christian love and service in the church and asked for the church to unite behind him. “To succeed, I need your help in my efforts to bring unity in the church. For unity to take root there has to be harmony in the church,” …
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by | Jul 21, 2023 | Uncategorized
A Supreme Court ruling against race-based admissions won’t change much for Christian liberal arts schools.
The US Supreme Court ruled against race-based college admissions last month, raising questions about the future of diversity efforts in higher education. But leaders at many evangelical colleges don’t expect the decision to hinder their efforts to promote diversity.
“For most Christian institutions, I don’t think there’s going to be a significant change in our recruiting practices or our admissions policies,” said James Steen, Houston Christian University’s vice president of enrollment management.
Steen, who has worked in Christian higher education admissions for 30 years, said the Supreme Court’s decision impacts institutions that are selecting students from a very large pool of applications.
“For the rest of us who aren’t the elite privates or flagship publics, we’re not turning anybody away, for the most part, who’s admissible,” he said.
Still, leaders of Christian colleges told CT they are taking this moment to clearly communicate the biblical heart behind the diversity efforts at their institutions. Pursuing a diverse student body, they say, is part of a larger mission and a critical way they seek to serve their communities.
At Houston Christian, for example, Steen said it’s important the college reflect the demographics of Houston, Texas—“an extremely diverse city.”
The college’s student demographics track pretty closely with the demographics of Houston itself. About 42 percent of undergraduate students are Hispanic, 24 percent are Black, 19 percent are white, and 9 percent are Asian.
“When you walk around our campus, your tour guide probably isn’t going to be a white student, right? You’re going to see …
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by | Jul 21, 2023 | Uncategorized
A negative score from groups accusing PEPFAR of supporting abortion threatens the program’s five-year renewal.
The President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, or PEPFAR, has been a uniquely successful bipartisan effort, saving 25 million lives globally from HIV/AIDS since it was put into place 20 years ago. Congress and the White House have reauthorized it every five years, under different parties. It has been credited with sparing entire countries from demise.
Now it is in danger of succumbing to a political brawl.
The program must be renewed this fall. But domestic pro-life organizations, including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and The Heritage Foundation’s action arm, Heritage Action, have said a vote in favor of PEPFAR’s five-year reauthorization would be a mark against a lawmaker in their scorecards for elected leaders. The Family Research Council told CT it will also score the vote.
The groups argue that the Biden administration is trying to use the program to fund the promotion and provision of abortions. Family Research Council’s vice president for policy and government affairs Travis Weber told CT that PEPFAR was “being used as a massive slush fund for abortion and LGBT advocacy.”
Pro-lifers working to combat HIV/AIDS overseas say that is not the case and have been surprised by the domestic pro-life opposition. Funding or promoting abortion through PEPFAR would be against US law. Abortion is also illegal or highly restricted in most countries with PEPFAR-funded programs, almost all of which are in Africa.
Pro-life organizations regularly score lawmakers’ votes on particular pieces of legislation as a way of assessing commitment to pro-life causes. Deeming a vote for a given measure as negative tends to scotch Republican votes for it.
“A five-year reauthorization to us is beyond …
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by | Jul 20, 2023 | Uncategorized
After a string of victories at the Supreme Court, focus turns to one major precedent that could be overturned.
It is an auspicious time for advocates of religious liberty in the United States. Consider what they have accomplished at the Supreme Court over the past year: They defended the right of Americans to express their faith while on the clock for a public school district (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District), affirmed the right of religious schools to use government vouchers (Carson v. Makin), heightened the standards protecting workplace accommodations for religious beliefs (Groff v. DeJoy), and expanded free speech protections for business owners who don’t want to make statements that go against their religious beliefs (303 Creative LLC v. Elenis).
What’s left to win? If you ask experts closely following the developments on the legal battlefield, they invariably give the same answer: Employment Division v. Smith.
“I predict that religious liberty advocates will ramp up their attack on Smith,” said Carl Esbeck, a professor of law at the University of Missouri. “They understand that 303 Creative was a wonderful victory, but it was a halfway victory. It only protects speech … so if they want full protection under the First Amendment free exercise clause, they need Smith reversed.”
In fact, it’s already begun. First Liberty and Alliance Defending Freedom, two religious liberty law groups, have already petitioned the Supreme Court to hear cases that call for Smith to be overruled.
To understand why Smith matters, one has to go back more than three decades. In the late 1980s, two counselors from a rehabilitation center in Oregon were fired after they ingested peyote as part of a Native American religious ceremony. The counselors applied for unemployment but were denied by the state because …
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