There has been continuing persecution against Christians in East Asia. A mob of 300 armed Muslims attacked a Christian boys’ school in Bannu, northern Pakistan in response to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, despite Christian groups publicly condemning the cartoons; four people were injured. In New Delhi, a protest march by Christians against the recent burning of several churches in the capital led to hundreds of arrests as the police said that the march was an “unlawful assembly”. And in China, a Hong Kong journalist who travelled to Wenzhou to interview Christians about the campaign of church demolition and removal of crosses from churches was arrested briefly; “they didn’t hold me for very long,” she said, “they just stopped me from interviewing people.”
The UK Government has responded to concerns over the effect of its proposed Counter-Terrorism Bill on free speech in universities and elsewhere by altering the Bill to include free speech among the “specially protected” characteristics to be promoted. The Government is also trying to make the guidance attached to the Bill clearer.
The Christian bakery in Oregon that declined to make a cake for a same-sex wedding has been found guilty of discrimination and ordered to pay $75,000 to each of the two complainers. The owners say the fines may bankrupt them. The bakery itself closed just over a year ago after boycotts, threats, harassment, and being shunned by other wedding vendors as a result; their lawyer has called the harassment against them “economic terrorism.”
A pastor from a Seventh day Adventist church in California, who decided to spend “a year without God”, has completed his year and announced that he is now an atheist. Ryan Bell says, “The world makes sense to me as it is; there’s no need to postulate a divine being to make it even more complex.” Bell is critical of those atheists who believe that science answers all the problems that religion purports to address, but also says that he wishes Christians realised that atheists are not all moral nihilists; many have searched for God but have “genuinely hit a brick wall.” However, Christian film producer Darren Wilson comments that he’s not surprised that Bell emerged as an atheist: “I have experienced God. I know He’s real, I know He’s there. I can’t imagine spending an hour without him, never mind a year.”
A 2,500 year old collection of clay tablets from Babylonia have been shown to confirm some of the Biblical account of the 70 year exile of the Jews in Babylonia. The tablets, written in cuneiform and each about the size of the palm of a hand, record administrative and business transactions from the period. They refer to a village of the Jews by the river Chebar (mentioned in the book of Ezekiel), and also include three names of Jews who are named in the Bible as being active shortly before or shortly after the Exile: Hanan, Shaltiel and Gedalyhu. Other relatively recent archaeological discoveries that back up Biblical accounts include locating and excavating the Pool of Siloam (which had stepped sides) and finding a tomb holding the body of a man who had been crucified, with the shin bones broken.
In technology news, a collection of formerly top secret documents, written by the wartime codebreakers at Bletchley Park in England, have been discovered and will shortly go on view in the site museum. All such documents were supposed to be destroyed, but the working conditions at Bletchley were primitive and poorly heated, and it seems that the codebreakers used all sorts of waste paper to block up holes in the ceilings and floors of the uninsulated huts. The documents, discovered during renovation in 2013, include the only surviving examples of Banbury sheets, used as part of the Banburismus technique for decoding the German’s Enigma machine.
And finally, a 99 year old woman from Iowa who learned dressmaking in her younger years is keeping herself busy by making dresses for little girls in Africa – at the rate of one dress every day. “I start each dress in the morning, take a midday break, then finish it in the afternoon”, she said. “It’s just what I like to do. I learnt how to do it and I thought, why not put it to good use?” The dresses are distributed by a Christian charity called Little Dresses for Africa. The lady aims to make her 1,000th dress on her 100th birthday in early May.
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