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POPSLiberation theology I never thought I'd ever see eye-to-eye with a US Southern Baptist. This one's rhetoric almost convinces me, but not quite.
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POPSThe martyrdom of the Iraqi Church Let this be a kind of postscript to the Blogswarm post of the 5th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraqui-American War, to which there is no end in sight. Did the neocons think about this when they unleashed the dogs of war in Iraq? Do they care?
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POPSMikhail Gorbachev as a Christian Several newspapers have reported that Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the USSR, is a Christian. What is surprising, however, is not so much the reports themselves as the source: the reports have come from Italy. It will be interesting to see if there are any follow-ups in the media, saying something about how Gorbachev practises his Christian faith back home in Russia. Does he have a parish and a parish priest? Where are they, and what do they have to say?
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POPSThe unexpected monks We've been talkibng about having a synchroblog on the new monasticism, and suddenly it seems to be popping up all over the place. Hat-tip to Paul Grabill for this link.
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POPSHoly Fools Frank Schaeffer's book about his evangelical upbringing and his father's legacy.
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POPSNigerian Christians join in witchhunts Witch hunting is a very ancient practice in Africa, but in the past it has not generally been something that Christians have engaged in. Western-initiated churches, which have been influenced by modernity, have tended to regard beliefs about witchcraft as superstition, and encouraged people to discard such views. African-initiated churches have taken witchcraft beliefs seriously, but have generally urged witches to repent, and teried to rehabilitate them (whereas in pagan African society witches were often thought to be incorrigible and deserving only death). But now new denominations, which appear to be mainly neopentecostal, seem to be persecuting suspected witches in a manner reminiscent of the Great European Witchhunt of early modern times.
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POPSJurisdictionalism hits Anglicans Anglicanism in the USA seems to be on its way to becoming a tangled mess of separate jurisdictions even more complicated than the jurisdictional mess in the Orthodox Church there. Some US Episcopalians have linked to Anglican dioceses in various parts of Africa, and now South America has jumped in. For the last 150 years or so the Orthodox diaspora has led to competing episcopal jurisdictions in places like Western Europe, North America and Australia. One can find overlapping juriisdictions of Greek, Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian and other bishops. Now the same thing is beginning to happen among the Anglicans, with Kenyan, Ugandan, Nigerian and now Argentinian bishops having overlapping jurisdictions. At least among the Orthodox, despite language and ethnic differences, there is the same faith.
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POPSThe religious right in action The US Internal Revenue Service recently investigated an Episcopal Church for jeopardising its tax-exempt staus by criticising the Iraqi-American War, which, according to the IRS, made it a political organisation. I wonder if they investigated this one?