by | Apr 30, 2024 | Uncategorized
As the presidential election approaches, the incumbent government seeks to win support with aid to churches and pastors.
In many countries, politicians try to win over religious voters by highlighting areas of shared interest between their agenda and the faithful’s priorities. In Venezuela, candidates are offering pastors cash.
With less than three months until Venezuela’s presidential elections, incumbent Nicolás Maduro is expanding two initiatives specifically aimed at the evangelical community, which represents 30.9 percent of the country’s population.
Bono El Buen Pastor (“The Good Shepherd Bonus”), created last year, and Plan Mi Iglesia Bien Equipada (“My Well-Equipped Church Plan”) offer resources to pastors and their churches, including cash, chairs, construction materials, and expensive sound equipment—no strings attached. Mi Iglesia Bien Equipada exists under Misión Venezuela Bella, a government program that invests in recreation and arts spaces, which has remodeled nearly 3,000 churches since 2019.
At the beginning of March, Maduro gathered 17,000 people in a pastors-only event in the northern city of Carabobo and announced that 20,000 additional pastors had become beneficiaries of the Bono El Buen Pastor program, which would deliver a monthly stipend of 495 bolivars (around $14 USD) to each new member. (Venezuela’s minimum legal monthly wage is 130 bolivars or $3.50.)
Officially, the government says the program aims to give churchgoers dignified spaces where they can develop their faith. There are, however, those who view the state’s generosity with some suspicion.
César Mermejo, president of the Evangelical Council of Venezuela and a leader of the Federación de Iglesias Mizpa de Venezuela, called these efforts by Maduro an attempt to buy the souls …
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by | Apr 30, 2024 | Uncategorized
As the presidential election approaches, the incumbent government seeks to win support with aid to churches and pastors.
In many countries, politicians try to win over religious voters by highlighting areas of shared interest between their agenda and the faithful’s priorities. In Venezuela, the current president is offering pastors cash.
With less than three months until Venezuela’s presidential elections, incumbent Nicolás Maduro is expanding two initiatives specifically aimed at the evangelical community, which represents 30.9 percent of the country’s population.
Bono El Buen Pastor (“The Good Shepherd Bonus”), created last year, and Plan Mi Iglesia Bien Equipada (“My Well-Equipped Church Plan”) offer resources to pastors and their churches, including cash, chairs, construction materials, and expensive sound equipment—no strings attached. Mi Iglesia Bien Equipada exists under Misión Venezuela Bella, a government program that invests in recreation and arts spaces, which has remodeled nearly 3,000 churches since 2019.
At the beginning of March, Maduro gathered 17,000 people in a pastors-only event in the northern city of Carabobo and announced that 20,000 additional pastors had become beneficiaries of the Bono El Buen Pastor program, which would deliver a monthly stipend of 495 bolivars (around $14 USD) to each new member. (Venezuela’s minimum legal monthly wage is 130 bolivars or $3.50.)
Officially, the government says the program aims to give churchgoers dignified spaces where they can develop their faith. There are, however, those who view the state’s generosity with some suspicion.
César Mermejo, president of the Evangelical Council of Venezuela and a leader of the Federación de Iglesias Mizpa de Venezuela, called these efforts by Maduro an attempt to buy …
Continue reading…
by | Apr 30, 2024 | Uncategorized
But true liberty, in art and in life, is created by constraints.
Taylor Swift answers to no one.
Not music industry executives: Her songs returned to TikTok in the middle of a licensing dispute between the app and her label.
Not mayors: When she graced their cities during her Eras tour, they declared days in her honor.
Not the international community: A Singapore-exclusive stop in Southeast Asia sparked a row between the city-state and nearby Thailand and the Philippines. The Japanese embassy issued a statement about her Super Bowl travel plans.
And Swift doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. She announced new music within minutes of winning her latest Grammy for album of the year.
You might take all this as proof of Swift’s business genius, nothing personal. But in her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, there’s definitely an “above it all” attitude. These songs are snarly. America’s sweetheart may have nothing left to prove. But she certainly has scores left to settle.
Swift is hardly a stranger to revenge. This is the songwriter, after all, who brought us lyrics like “It’s obvious that wanting me dead / Has really brought you two together.”
But TTPD broadens her aggression and scorns the prospect of reconciliation. A small-town girl takes on her community over a controversial love affair and trolls her parents with a joke pregnancy announcement. A depressed performer boasts sardonically about how well she can sell happiness to frenzied fans. A woman seethes at being seen as a problematic starlet by her new boyfriend’s circle.
There’s a track suspiciously similar to an Olivia Rodrigo song (the two singers have a rumored feud). The title of another appears to name-drop Kim Kardashian, an older nemesis.
Critics agree that …
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by | Apr 30, 2024 | Uncategorized
In Reversing Entropy, the 95-year-old poet looks lovingly at creation.
Luci Shaw is a legend in Christian literary circles. Her many volumes of poetry—named for rivers and clay, the color green, the glint of seaglass—speak to the beauty of creation and the generosity of the Creator. She has written on faith and art, the Christian imagination, and prayer, including a few books co-authored with her friend, Madeleine L’Engle. Shaw is also a beloved teacher, serving as longtime writer-in-residence at Regent College.
Speaking with the poet about her latest collection Reversing Entropy (out this spring from Paraclete Press), I understood how she has served as an inspiration for generations of students and readers. She’s gentle, curious, and wise. Her way of seeing the world is wondrous—everything from lichens, to a shivering little lake, to “jewel dew” in the grass, is significant. All the world inspires praise.
Reversing Entropy doesn’t just look around; it looks ahead. Luci Shaw is 95 years old, and this collection is understandably full of endings. Leaves fall; ripe apricots drop from a tree; her brother passes away. There is “the inevitable decay / the leaving and the dying.”
But there’s also hope. From the collection’s final entry, a long, tumbling prose poem that Shaw says “poured out” of her “like a gift”:
Give praise, now, to our God, the Quickener, the One who stirs us into such new life that we, and all creation, may wake to the sound of a fresh music, and start to sing again the songs of love, and longing, and refreshment. …Come Springtime, that most beneficent of seasons, all, everything, every thing, will be thawing, rising, joyful, laughing, tuning up for the evermore, and in every green …
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by | Apr 29, 2024 | Uncategorized
How the world’s largest nongovernmental provider of the resource is delivering on its promise.
For years, whenever Regina Mukasimpunga sat in church, she found it hard to concentrate on anything other than the chore awaiting her when service let out: fetching water.
The never-ending task dominated the life of the rural Rwandan community, forcing residents to leave the house with jerry cans before the sun came up to take long walks in the darkness in the hilly terrain to reach a spring. There, they often competed with other families to fill jugs, everyone desperate to move on with their days as quickly as possible.
“We would wake up at 5 a.m. to get water, which often took two hours. When we finished, we were exhausted,” said Mukasimpunga, at her home in Gicumbi district, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of the capital, Kigali. “We couldn’t farm productively.”
Mukasimpunga and her husband, Fulgence Ndemeye, enlisted their three children to help, but the job could last so long it made the children late for school, their tardiness earning them reprimands from their teachers and challenging their ability to keep up in school and study when at home.
Then, in 2021, World Vision opened a water station about 50 meters (164 feet) from their home. The life change was immediate: Now, everyone could start their day on time, take more showers, and wash their clothes more frequently. Mukasimpunga and Ndemeye could grow tomatoes year-round and not just during the rainy season. They could triple the livestock water ration, which meant their cow gave them more milk, which they could sell to their neighbors. The family’s economics improved so much, they were able to join a savings group.
Mukasimpunga and Ndemeye’s story is just one of many. The same story has happened over and over again in …
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