The recent terrorist attack by Muslims against hotels and a cafe in Ougadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso killed seven missionaries among the 29 casualties. Six were Canadians from near Quebec City who were on a three-week mission trip to work at orphanages and schools in remote villages. The seventh was an American long-term missionary; Michael Riddering, a founder of the International House Of Prayer in St. Louis, worked with local women and children alongside his wife, and had counselled families and dug graves during the recent Ebola crisis. Riddering and his wife had two adult daughters in the US, and an adopted teenage daughter and toddler in Burkina Faso.
A Christian couple whose two adopted sons were taken away from them by social workers have been given leave to challenge the ruling. The brothers, who had traumatic backgrounds, lived with the couple and their two natural children for four years until an incident occurred at exam time when the younger boy reached for the car’s steering wheel on the way to school. His mother pushed him back, whereupon the boy told schoolteachers a list of fabrications which led to the case in family court. The court case itself was very troubling because, in the couple’s words, “The opinions of social workers were taken as truth by the judge. Objective evidence is not required in these courts. The social workers exhibited no clear understanding of Christianity, and our parenting methods were criticised. The objective evidence of the boys' progress over years seems to have been dismissed; the primary reason the judge gave for refusing to return the children to their adoptive parents was that a psychologist's report didn't recommend the children's return.” Andrea Williams of the Christian Legal Centre described this case as “the tip of an iceberg of gross injustice that we are unable to expose because of the secrecy surrounding family courts.”
In the USA, a former Catholic altar boy whose graphic testimony of serial rape by priests led to three priests and one senior supervisor being jailed, has been accused of lying by Newsweek after a review of the case. Daniel Gallagher changed his story nine times during cross examination, and when confronted, either refused to answer or blamed his poor memory on drug use in schooldays – even though his mother claimed that he never served as an altar boy at early morning Mass. He also admitted to lying to prosecutors about his medical history. Yet the grand jury report blamed changes in his personality on the alleged abuse rather than on drug use. There has been criticism of the courts for being too ready to believe his story, especially in the light of a lurid article publicising his alleged abuse. Three of the priests remain in jail; the fourth died there after being denied a heart operation.
In the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, twelve people have been arrested for converting from Hinduism to Christianity. Religious conversion in the state is illegal without permission of the (Hindu) government. Seven were released from jail on bail; five remain incarcerated.
Geroge Weidenfeld, the head of the publishing house Weidenfeld & Nicholson, famous for publishing “Lolita”, has died at the age of 96. Weidenfeld, a Jew, escaped from Austria to Britain in 1938 on a ‘Kindertransport’ train and became a British citizen in 1947. He was a tireless worker for Jewish causes, and a Labour peer until he left the Labour Party in 1981. He credited Quakers and Plymouth Brethren with saving his life, and tried to repay that debt last year by setting up a fund to evacuate Syrian Christians from that country. 150 Syrian Christians were flown to Warsaw last July with funding from Weidenfeld, and were also awarded 12-18 months of paid support. The fund aimed to help 20,000 Syrian Christians.
The United Methodist church in the USA has banned a group arguing for Intelligent Design from exhibiting at their annual conference. The denomination’s official website calls on Christians to embrace the theory of evolution rather than creation, but the official reason for refusing the stand was that it “conflicted with our social principles.”
Similarly, the (evangelical) InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s annual conference denied an application from a pro-life student group to exhibit there. The Exhibits Manager said, “It does not align with one of our key criteria, which is to have advancing God’s global mission as the vision and purpose of the organization.”
There has been further activity surrounding the undercover videos which exposed Planned Parenthood’s selling of baby body parts. Planned Parenthood has decided to sue the film makers, claiming that the videos were recorded illegally. Meanwhile, a pro-life group has made Dr Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood their 2015 Pro-Life Person of the Year, saying that her comments in the videos did more for the pro-life cause than anyone else’s words in that year.
The US Stata of Indiana has introduced a Bill to make abortion illegal once the foetus has a detectable heartbeat. Such a Bill appears to be an attempt at defining life as beginning when the heart starts beating. Such a move is controversial because a foetus’ heart usually starts beating at around six weeks’ gestation, which would be a very short time after many women discovered that they were pregnant.
There have also been two medical reports on pregnancy and abortion. One, from Chile, is designed to counter a document that claims that ‘post abortion syndrome does not exist’; it is signed by over 200 psychologists, psychiatrists and doctors and gives case studies of post abortion “damage to mental health of women”. The other showed that unborn babies, at 16 weeks’ gestation or later, respond to music by moving their mouth and tongue in specific ways; it was previously thought that babies could not hear until 26 weeks’ gestation.
There has been widespread condemnation from MPs of several parties of the suggestion by the head of OFSTED that Sunday schools, Scouts and similar organisations should be monitored by OFSTED. The Prime Minister has stepped in and said that such organisations will not be required to register with OFSTED.
In music news, Christian rapper Jahaziel has renounced his Christian faith because of, among other things, "the brutal nature of [the Bible's] God, [the Bible's so-called] second class view of women, [and Christianity's] financial corruption." He claims he has not renounced God, though, just religion.
In film news, “Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus” proposes a new theory regarding the Israelites’ time in Egypt. It has long been thought that the Israelites were in Egypt around the 13th century BC, at the time of Ramses II, because the Bible says that the Hebrews built the city of Ramses. However, the new theory places the Hebrew population some four hundred years earlier, in the Hyksos capital of Avaris – and one of the pyramids in Avaris contains a painting inside of a man in a multi-coloured robe.
And finally, a high-speed police chase in New Zealand was only ended when the suspects found the road blocked by a flock of sheep. The chase had begun near the town of Alexandra and had sped through central Otago, despite the suspects losing one tyre to road spikes, over many miles, until they were stopped by the sheep. Ironically, the sheep belonged to a police officer; none were hurt in the line of duty. Two men aged 19 and 23 were charged with car and petrol theft and reckless driving; two passengers aged 14 were charged with car and petrol theft.
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