During the four-day event, 'Victorython' in September Jesse Duplantis said: "I honestly believe this - the reason why Jesus hasn't come is that people are not giving the way God told them to give." Read more

"Let us run with endurance the race set out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12.)

Mash-ups of religion and national identity have cropped up throughout U.S. history, although experts argue that it has emerged with particular fervour under Trump. Read more

Her actions were in breach of Alert Level 4 rules. Read more

Now, in The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, Frances FitzGerald answers the recurrent question, "Where did these people [mainly right-wing zealots] come from?"

She says there is no mystery involved. They were always here. We were just not looking at them. What repeatedly makes us look again is what she is here to tell us.

"Evangelicals" is an elastic term, and FitzGerald intermittently shrinks or stretches it. But she does direct us to the right starting point, to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Great Awakenings, major religious events in our early history when the word "evangelicalism" came into wide American use.

Evangelical religion is revival religion, that of emotional contagion. It can best be characterized, for taxonomic purposes, by three things: crowds, drama, and cycles.

Crowds
The first Great Awakening, of the 1730s and 1740s, stunned entire regions by the numbers of people who took part.

The leading preacher in a cadre of them, George Whitefield—who, with John and Charles Wesley, founded the Methodist movement in England—had followings that overflowed the churches and followed him out to streets, plazas, or the nearby countryside.

When Benjamin Franklin went to hear Whitefield preach from the steps of Philadelphia's City Hall in 1739, he measured with characteristic precision the reach of his voice in different directions, and felt that he had verified reports that 25,000 people could hear him preach in a cleared space.

Before he came from England, Whitefield had already become a "field preacher"; the skeptic David Hume, who listened to one of his sermons in Edinburgh, is said to have told a friend, "He is…the most ingenious preacher I ever heard. It is worth while to go twenty miles to hear him."

Any man who could astonish Hume in Scotland and Franklin in America was a preacher beyond any orbit of expectation. The great Samuel Johnson said of Whitefield, "He would be followed by crowds were he to wear a night-cap in the pulpit, or were he to preach from a tree." Continue reading

Sources

• The New York Review of Books, review by Garry Wills
• Image: Theology & the City

Six houses, eleven kiosks, and a mushala (small mosque) were burned, and a man was shot dead.

"We regret the burning of mushala and the attack on Muslims in Tolikara, which caused the loss of life during the celebrations," said the leaders in their statement.

"In regard of this event, we also push the authorities to immediately solve the problem completely and professionally by processing the actors according to the law."

"We also ask the people not to be provoked by false issues [spread by] irresponsible people."

A group of people believed to be members of the Evangelical Church of Indonesia (GIDI) went to Baitul Mustaqin Mosque in Tolikara when Muslims were performing an Eid prayer on Friday.

They protested the use of a loudspeaker during the prayer, stating that it was disturbing an event their church was holding at the same time.

A police spokesman had said that the incident was incited by a letter spread by local Christian leaders in Papua's Tolikara Regency last week, calling on Muslims not to perform the Eid el- Fitr prayer near where Christians were to attend a seminar.

On Wednesday police reported they were set to charge several suspects.

National Police chief General Badrodin Haiti said that police were investigating all claims surrounding the incident, including the spreading of flyers purportedly from the GIDI — the largest religious group in the district.

GIDI has denied distributing the flyers and instead accused police of inciting the riot by firing at some GIDI youths "peacefully protesting" the use of loudspeakers in the mass prayer.

Source

• globalindonesianvoices.com
• shanghaidaily.com
• antaranews.com
• radionz.co.nz
• thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com
• Image: muslimvillage.com

He told Pentecostal bishops visiting him in Rome that Catholics and Evangelicals should "walk together".

Focussing on differences amounts to "sinning against God's will", the Pope said.

He said Christians should not wait for theologians' documents before forging closer ties.

"We each have in our Churches excellent theologians. That's another way to walk together also. But we shouldn't wait for them to reach agreement! That's what I think."

He went on to say that Christians' shared Baptism was more important than the differences between denominations.

The Pope said Christians should walk together, pray for each other and do works of charity together, while seeking truth.

Continue reading

At last count, the post had attracted more than 700 comments, the vast majority in agreement with her.

The idea that there's a national war on Christmas is going strong in the USA. Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's new book, "Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas," is at No. 14 on The New York Times best-seller list for hardback nonfiction. Continue reading

Joseph Walters, a prominent evangelical church leader in Papua New Guinea, says the Speaker did the right thing, and there are many people who support what he did.

He said ,"Papua New Guinea has basically originated from an animistic society and a lot of ancestral worship and those things that we used to pay homage and respect to were unmystically, paganistically-based and that's where our argument is that carvings and statutes and other stuff that people with their hands actually have connotations and connections through the spirit world that are just as painful."

The speaker, Theo Zurenuoc, removed carved panels from the front of the building, despite a call from prime minister, Peter O'Neill, to stop.

The Post Courier reports that he said he will not be sitting down for a discussion with the PNG Council of Churches over the objects that were removed from the Parliament House.

"I do not want to sit with them, it's not necessary,'' he said, adding that this was because some of them had strong beliefs in some cultures that were not appropriate.

Source

• Radio Australia
• Radio New Zealand Intenational
• Post Courier
• Image: PNGBlogs/Rocky Roe

But Clive Staples Lewis, arguably the greatest communicator of the Christian message in the 20^th century, was anything but plain.

He died on November 22, 1963, the same day as Aldous Huxley and President Kennedy, and while Lewis never completed the journey from Anglican to Catholic, he was well on the way; according to his last secretary Walter Hooper - whom am I proud to call a good friend - it was inevitably and only a matter of time.

Although evangelicals have adopted him as one of their own, this sacramental, liturgical Christian who smoked and drank was always a Catholic at heart.

He wrote Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, Surprised by Joy, and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, among so many other titles. Several of his Narnia books have been made into movies, and commercialism being what it is, there is now a thunderstorm of books and videos.

But it is a sweet rain and in this case it is a joy to be made wet. Lewis would have laughed at such antics, always considering himself to be an ordinary teacher and an ordinary Christian.

In fact, Lewis was a most extraordinary teacher. A lecturer at both Oxford and Cambridge, he was considered one of the finest minds of his generation by fellow professors.

His English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama and The Allegory of Love are still considered to be academic masterpieces.

But it is Lewis the Christian who changed the world. Continue reading.

Source: Catholic World Report

Image: cslewisjrrtolkien.classicalautographs.com

"Often sincere people who leave our Church do not do so as a result of what non-Catholic groups believe, but fundamentally as a result of their own lived experience; for reasons not of doctrine but of life; not for strictly dogmatic, but for pastoral reasons; not due to theological problems, but to methodological problems of our Church," he told a delegation of Colombian bishops on June 21.

"What is important, then, is to become better believers, more pious, affable and welcoming in our parishes and communities, so that no-one feels distant or excluded," he said.

The Pope was referring particularly to Latin America, where the "increasingly active presence" of Pentecostal and Evangelical communities "cannot be ignored or underestimated".

Offering some practical advice, the Pope called for better catechesis — particularly to the young — as well as carefully prepared homilies at Mass and the promotion of Catholic doctrine in schools and universities.

Following this path, he said, would help awaken in Catholics "the aspiration to share with others the joy of following Christ and become members of his mystical body".

He said bishops should also try to facilitate "serene and open" dialogue with other Christian communities — "without losing one's own identity" — so as to improve relations and "overcome distrust and unnecessary confrontations".

Sources

• CNA
• News.va
• Image: Laloking97

The Equippers Church sign, which also displayed a tally of six to signify the number of people the church claimed had been healed of cancer caused outrage among many people, and sparked an investigation with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) after nine complaints were laid.

Continue reading

The collectors apparently weaved through traffic, banging on car windows to ask for money.

After a Herald report yesterday on the group's "window-cleaner-style methods" of seeking cash at Greenlane, dozens of readers said they had encountered the collectors elsewhere - Queen St, St Lukes, Mission Bay, Parnell and Newmarket. Continue reading

Read Brian O'Connell's Focus article in the Marist Messenger
Image: Wikipedia