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There are two distinct reactions to gun violence. One is to tighten gun regulations in an effort to get guns off the street. The other is to arm more people so they can kill would-be attackers. The Charleston, South Carolina, shooting at a church last year has provided the Mississippi legislature with a pretext to do the latter.
March 2016 has been punctuated by violence. On March 4, a group of terrorists attacked a convent and nursing home run by the Missionaries of Charity, also known as Mother Teresa's Home, in Yemen. Sixteen people, including eight residents, four nuns, and several other volunteers were killed.
On September 27, 2014, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor in eastern Ukraine was abducted by gunmen as he was conducting a communion service at a small church in Horlivka. According to parishioners, reports the Adventist Review, the gunmen refused to identify themselves or answer any questions. They forced Pastor Sergei Litovchenko to close the church and get into a car. The […]
These types of incidents used to be few and far between for us in the United States. (I fully realize that these types of events are a way of life for many people around the world.) To feel for the people suffering in Boston and the people suffering in West was just too much for me, as much as I knew and know that deserve all the sympathy, empathy, love and prayers that I can give. As the time has passed this week my hearts have gone out to them and I wish them a peace and a comfort that I believe only God can give.
EXCERPT: Airline travelers who feel they've been harassed at airport check-ins by screeners now have a speedier outlet on which to complain right at their fingertips. The Sikh Coalition, a civil rights advocacy group, on Monday released a mobile application on iPhones and Android phones giving passengers who feel they've been racially or religiously profiled a way to speak out […]
By Martin Surridge – Like many of the other countries profiled in this blog, Germany has had a problematic, yet fundamentally important religious history. Home to both the Holocaust and the Protestant Reformation, Germany provided Europe with the impetus to take giant strides forward in the name of religious freedom, but also inflicted terrible losses and unimaginable pain on millions. […]
EXCERPT: Christian and Islamic views of warfare are closer than we have been led to believe. When it comes to questions of war and peace, is American Christianity more like Muhammad or Jesus? Since 9/11, such a question has seemed outrageous to many Americans. But perhaps the offense is grounded in some unhelpful assumptions. Here in the Bible Belt, many […]
EXCERPT: A comprehensive public opinion survey by the Pew Research Center finds no indication of increased alienation or anger among Muslim Americans in response to concerns about home-grown Islamic terrorists, controversies about the building of mosques and other pressures on this high-profile minority group in recent years. Nor does the new polling provide any evidence of rising support for Islamic […]
EXCERPT: It passed with only scant notice, as with so many of the rude extremes of American life in a kinetic media age. The bodies of those Norwegian children slaughtered by a terrorist had yet to be fully recovered, let alone buried, when Glenn Beck compared the victims to Nazis. The summer camp where children of the Norwegian Labor Party […]
Graz also urged caution in the use of the term "fundamentalist" to describe the individual alleged to have carried out the attacks, instead proffering the term "extremist" as a more accurate description of the type of ideology and behavior that falls far outside the norms of a religious community.
"There's a risk that 'fundamentalism' will become blurred in people's minds with the idea of 'conservative Christianity' — a confusion that could serve to widen the gulf of misunderstanding between different religious traditions," he said.