By Ryan Bell – In the United States, the claim that Christians are being persecuted is unsubstantiated. Of course there are cases of intolerance. Christians in predominantly secular contexts, like public universities and large cities like New York and Los Angeles, do experience discrimination, but it hardly rises to the level of what could be credibly called persecution.
Author: Ryan Bell
Down the Rabbit Hole: What’s Really at Stake With Domestic Surveillance? (Huffington Post)
Ryan J. Bell writes the following for the Huffington Post, excerpted briefly below. Click here to read the full article. EXCERPT: [box]We know that PRISM is not a surveillance program but a massive computer system used to crunch data. But the claim that anyone who refers to PRISM as a data-mining program should not be trusted cuts…
Spencer Chiimbwe—Adventist Peacemaker (Spectrum)
Spencer Chiimbwe is a Zambian national residing in the United States since 2006. Throughout his life he has been involved in conflict transformation at a national and international level including being a Peace Fellow, Action Researcher and Coordinator for both the Coalition for Peace in Africa in Southern Africa Region and for the ACTION Support Center. He is also a member of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPACC), a global civil society-led network which seeks to build international consensus on peace building and prevention of violent conflict. Finally, after moving to New York City, he founded the New York Center for Conflict Dialogue which enhances diplomatic efforts to resolve conflicts through facilitating and coordinating various thematic forums on conflict.
Conversation is the True Work of Peacemaking – Huffington Post
Last week I spent three days at a gathering of the leaders of the Religious Peace Fellowships in Stony Point, N.Y. There were representatives from more than a dozen Christian denominations — from Catholic and Orthodox to Mennonite and Brethren — as well as Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist peace fellowships. And me, from the Adventist Peace Fellowship. It was the first time such a gathering had taken place in many years. It was clear that while peacemaking in our increasingly violent world was an urgent priority for all of us, working together across denominational and religious lines was something we didn’t understand as well.
God’s Counterterrorism in a ’24’ World
God’s Counterterrorism in a ’24’ World from Ryan Bell on Vimeo. Ryan Bell, the pastor Hollywood Seventh-day Adventist Church, gave this presentation at La Sierra University on January 28, 2010.
Announcing and Enacting Peace in an Age of Empire
By Ryan Bell Introduction/Story Who are the children of God? Who will inherit the kingdom of God? These are the questions that are heavy on the minds of the Jewish people at the time Jesus begins his public ministry. There was a great debate between the various parties of the Jewish people about how…