by | Aug 16, 2024 | Uncategorized
I’m a missiologist and a migrant who lives in Liverpool. Can Christians who have served overseas stand up for my community?
Though born in Malawi, for the past eight years, I have made Liverpool my home. In this UK port city where, for centuries, millions of immigrants have passed through and at times settled, the vibrant migrant community is small but connected. Each June, for instance, we celebrate the Africa Oyé festival, a live music event that draws tens of thousands to the city annually.
At the same time, many of us who recently arrived or whose families are relative newcomers know the fragility of our feelings of belonging. Three years ago, for example, three Black players on the English team missed their penalty kicks during the European Championship match shootout and were subject to a torrent of racist insults.
In recent weeks, Liverpool has been the epicenter of the anti-migrant riots that have rocked the nation following the horrific stabbing of three young white British girls by a Black British teenager of Rwandan heritage in a nearby suburb. Since then, furor over these devastating murders has turned into nationwide riots targeting Black and brown communities (including both those born and raised in the country and those newly arrived) and their properties.
As a leader in a multicultural Liverpool church, I have found the past weeks to be strenuous. We have contended with the logistical nightmare of making sure that migrant communities (my own family included) are safe, including temporarily relocating children and the elderly to calmer neighborhoods and making sure their houses and cars are safe. We have also been trying to provide immediate and future psychological support for those traumatized. Among other violent actions, far-right protesters have attacked migrants, burned their cars, and smashed their windows as well as …
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by | Aug 15, 2024 | Uncategorized
The Church of England minister wrote “Tell Out, My Soul,” “Lord, for the Years,” “Sing a New Song,” and “Faithful Vigil Ended.”
Timothy Dudley-Smith, author of “Tell Out, My Soul,” “Lord, for the Years,” “Sing a New Song,” and more than 400 other hymns, died in Cambridge, England, on August 12. He was 97.
Dudley-Smith was a Church of England bishop, serving as the suffragan, or assistant bishop, of Thetford in Norwich for 12 years before he retired in 1991. Prior to taking a position in leadership, he served as director of the Church Pastoral Aid Society.
He was always more widely known, however, for his hymns. Many Anglicans deeply cherished his words.
“These hymns restore our faith, not only in the gospel, but also in the action of singing that gospel together, with heart, and soul, and voice,” a retired English professor at the University of Durham wrote in 2006. “Dudley-Smith never lets us down. There are no weak lines, no approximate rhymes, no distortions of syntax, no fumbled metres … no bad hymns.”
Dudley-Smith’s most popular hymn, “Tell Out, My Soul,” has been published 190 times in Great Britain and is also popular in the US and elsewhere. It was first written in 1961, and by 1985, appeared in 42 percent of all contemporary hymnals, according to hymnary.org.
Ten of Dudley-Smith’s other songs have been published more than two dozen times. “Faithful Vigil Ended”—“Faithful vigil ended / watching waiting cease / Master, grant thy servant / his discharge in peace”—has appeared in 28 different hymnals. “Name of All Majesty,” written in 1979, appears in more than 70, including translations in French, Korean, and Chinese.
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by | Aug 15, 2024 | Uncategorized
A number of high-profile Christians have converted to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Why should we stay?
In recent decades, there has been a significant and sustained trend of Protestants converting to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The most notable figure recently is J. D. Vance, the vice-presidential running mate of former president Donald Trump.
But he’s not alone. Vance is just one name in the growing list of high-profile, theologically conservative Christians who have made public shifts away from their Protestant backgrounds (often evangelical) to these more liturgical or “high church” traditions.
Earlier this year, Candace Owens, a controversial conservative voice, announced on the social platform X that she had “made the decision to go home,” in reference to her return to Roman Catholicism. Cameron Bertuzzi of Capturing Christianity, a prominent YouTube channel, reportedly became a Catholic in 2022, and Hank Hanegraaff (the “Bible Answer Man”) of the Christian Research Institute converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 2017. Another, Joshua Charles, joined the Catholic church in 2018 and has since become very vocal about both his conversion and his defense of Rome’s doctrines.
Of course, there are always exceptions to every trend, as is the case with former Eastern Orthodox priest Joshua Schooping, author of Disillusioned: Why I Left the Eastern Orthodox Priesthood and Church, and Brad Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo—a Catholic turned Protestant—who together published Why Do Protestants Convert? last year.
This perceived trend also does not appear to be the case in nondenominational churches, since, according to a previous article from CT, former Roman Catholics have gone from comprising 6 percent of nondenominational congregations to 17 percent in the past 50 …
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by | Aug 15, 2024 | Uncategorized
The local evangelical alliance that fought government proposals in 2016 now says it supports regulations to prevent a future Shakahola.
A year after more than 400 members of a Christian sect starved to death in eastern Kenya’s Shakahola forest, a Kenyan task force is calling for policy regulations it hopes will allow the government to better balance religious liberty and human rights.
Paul Mackenzie, who led Shakahola’s Good News International Church, is still in custody awaiting the outcome of the case filed against him by the state. He and his associates have been charged with the death of 191 minors, and authorities believe the victims acted under direction from Mackenzie, an end times preacher who promised them heaven if they starved to death.
“The policy aims at strengthening the right for the use of freedom of religion and at same time to protect the public from potential harm arising from the practice of religion and belief,” the Religious Organizations Policy report stated in its introduction. “It ensures freedom of religion and belief is not used as an avenue to abuse human rights and dignity.”
Its most wide-reaching mandate would force all churches seeking to be legally registered with the government to first affiliate to existing denominations or umbrella groups. These groups include the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya (EAK), the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Kenya National Congress of Pentecostal Churches, the Kenya Coalition of Churches Alliance and Ministries, and the Organization of African Instituted Churches.
The current law requires churches to register with the Registrar of Societies but does not require them to affiliate with any recognized religious bodies.
Working with the umbrella groups “is a mechanism for self-regulation. It is a better …
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by | Aug 15, 2024 | Uncategorized
A PCA congregation gives up their Sunday spots after weeks of protests from cyclists.
If all goes well, worshippers at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia will be able to park on the streets near the church in peace.
They just may have to walk a little bit farther to do so.
Earlier this week, after months of protest by Philly Bike Action, a local association of cyclists, the church decided to give up a city permit that allowed congregants to park on the street outside the building. Those temporary parking spots, which were valid on Sunday mornings, were located in what is otherwise a bike lane.
That drew the ire of Philly Bike Action, which staged 18 weeks of what organizers called “bike lane parties” in front of the church on Sundays, where cyclists often held signs of protest and took photos of church members parked in bike lanes.
While church leaders defended the congregation’s right to park in the bike lane, they also realized they were alienating the community. As a result, the church decided to work with the city to find alternative parking.
“The point is that many of our neighbors see us as self-centered, pursuing our own interests and unconcerned with their welfare,” Tim Geiger, executive pastor of Tenth, told church members in a video posted to the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation’s Facebook page. “That’s something that could easily become a stumbling block for them, as we try to invite them to know the Lord and to know us as a church.”
The growing popularity of bike lanes has caused unintended challenges in older cities like Philadelphia—where city officials have to balance access for bikers with the needs of the broader community, including churches, on narrow streets first designed for horses and buggies.
In Washington, …
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