The Underground -- Christians in Myanmar among victims of powerful earthquake

Christians in Myanmar among victims of powerful earthquake
Christians laud, critique Obama’s position in Libya
Jordan fights for possession of Christian books that may precede writings of St. Paul
Troubling trends for U.S. homeschoolers are cited by college chancellor
Afghan Christian detained for apostasy may face death penalty
Christian Manga group kicks off fund raiser to go digital

Christians in Myanmar among victims of powerful earthquake

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 11:05 AM PDT

Christians were included among the victims of the powerful earthquakes that struck Northeast Myanmar recently, destroying at least 10 churches among over 100 damaged buildings.

Three earthquakes struck the country on March 24 with aftershocks through the weekend ranging in magnitude from 5.4 to 7.0. Some 100 were killed and perhaps 150 injured, Continental News said.

However, BosNewsLife said Myanmar’s government officials pegged the number of dead at 300. In previous disasters the military government was reluctant to give exact numbers of the dead and wounded.

The earthquakes struck the Golden Triangle, where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and northern Thailand meet. The epicenter was south of the Burmese town Keng Tung, according to Continental News.

Hundreds of miles from the epicenter the quake was felt in Rangoon, Myanmar, Bangkok in Thailand, and Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh Cities in Vietnam, BosNewsLife said, quoting Christian missionaries.

Serious damage was experienced in the towns of Tachilek, Mong Lin, Tarlay and Keng Tung in the northeastern part of Myanmar where bridges collapsed, making it harder to reach these areas, Continental News said.

BosNewsLife mentioned photos of leveled buildings and roads sliced in two due to the shifting ground. Stephen Van Valkenburg, overseas director for Southeast Asia, Christian Aid Mission told BosNewsLife, “Thousands of families are homeless and several churches were destroyed or severely damaged in hard-to-reach villages.”

CAM collaborates with native missionaries, a number of which are in isolated areas that were hit by the earthquake including areas with the indigenous Lahu and Akha groups, BosNewsLife reported.

CAM has established an emergency relief fund for the victims. Valkenburg told BosNewsLife, “As in most such disasters medical help for the injured comes first, then long term efforts to rebuild homes, churches, Christian orphanages and schools as well as native missionary training centers.”

Another Christian group, Gospel for Asia, supports hundreds of pastors and aid workers in Myanmar. GFA deployed several Compassion Services teams to affected areas but is having difficulty reaching its workers in remote areas, Charisma Magazine said.

The earthquake is expected to impose added pressure on Christians who are already dealing with a government crackdown from Myanmar’s military junta, including forcible relocation and forced labor even of children, BosNewsLife said.

The military junta has been sanctioned by the international community for its human rights record, according to BosNewsLife.

Series of disasters

Myanmar has faced a series of natural disasters including a 2008 cyclone where 100,000 died, and a 2009 rat infestation that destroyed crops. Last summer the country had another cyclone. The recent earthquake is said to equal the magnitude of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Charisma Magazine said.

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Christians laud, critique Obama’s position in Libya

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 11:05 AM PDT

Christians have good things and bad things to say about the position that President Barack Obama is taking in Libya.

Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention said Obama made the correct decision, and lauded the president’s highlighting of American ideals, Baptist Press said.

Land said, “[M]any Americans and most Southern Baptists appreciated President Obama’s reaffirmation of our values and beliefs, and that it would violate our values and beliefs to allow human beings to be massacred by their own government, when we had the ability to stop such a slaughter of human beings with a relatively small exercise of American military power,” Baptist Press reported.

Land said Obama’s action “[I]s the opposite and correct decision to the wrong decision by President Clinton not to intervene in Rwanda in 1994, which resulted in as many as one million people being hacked to death in about three months’ time,” according to Baptist Press.

Land added, “At least in the end we’re doing the right thing. I just hope and pray that it is not too late because Gaddafi murdering his fellow citizens, butchering them – it’s what the world looks like without U.S. leadership,” The Christian Post reported.

Land also said, “Mr. Gaddafi needs to be tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity including the Lockerbie bombing, and then he needs to be hung as the war criminal that he is,” according to Christianity Today.

Just-war tradition

Another evangelist who approves is Chuck Colson, founder of Breakpoint. On his webpage Colson said that intervention by coalition forces must follow “the Christian just-war tradition.”

Colson wrote on his blog, “In order to be just, a military action must be for a just cause and done for the right reason. It must be waged by a legitimate authority as a last resort. I can’t imagine a more just and proportional response to the massacre of innocent people than to establish a no-fly zone. So, I was mystified and chagrined by our nation’s inaction.

“Again, America can’t run around the globe solving every conflict. But there are times when we have the ability and the moral obligation to stop a grave injustice … and to help innocent people who seek only freedom. This was one of those times,” Colson wrote in his website.

Colson concluded in his blog, “America is great so long as it is a moral beacon. When we behave immorally, when we look the other way in the face of grave evil, we lose our greatness. And we Christians — the moral conscience of society — have to be the ones to say so.”

Illegal use of military

Land said that while he lauds Obama’s action, the president was wrong to do it without congressional approval. “For the president to authorize the use of American military force in combat without seeking the prior or the subsequent approval of Congress is — to put it bluntly – illegal,” Baptist Press reported.

The 1973 War Powers Act allows a U.S. president to send forces into battle for 60 days, with an additional 30 day extension–without congressional approval. Land said Obama should, within those 90 days, get congress to approve, Baptist Press said.

Land stressed, “Otherwise, it sets a dangerous precedent of the overreach of executive branch power and does damage to the balance of powers designed by our forefathers,” Baptist Press reported.

Evangelicals in the U.K. said international interference in Libya should be contained and not escalate. Steve Clifford, general director of the U.K.’s Evangelical Alliance said, ““We ask that the current UN campaign does not go beyond its mandate and that civilian lives are protected in every possible way,” The Christian Post reported.

American interests and values

In a televised speech at the National Defense University, Washington D.C., Obama said, “There will be times…when our safety is not directly threatened, but our interests and our values are,” according to the Baptist Press.

The goal of the U.S. action is only to protect the Libyan people and to ground the Libyan air force by enforcing a no-fly zone with the support of the United Nations Security Council, according to the Baptist Press.

The overthrow of Gaddafi will be done non-militarily, otherwise, “Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake,” Obama said, and would lead to U.S. troops on the ground, increased cost, and may destroy the coalition, Baptist Press said.

“To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq, [which] took eight years, [and cost] thousands of American and Iraqi lives and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya,” the Baptist Press reported.

Obama said the international coalition intervention in Libya seeks to strengthen democracy and prevent possible obstructions to transitions taking place in Tunisia and Egypt, according to the Baptist Press.

Obama said, “The democratic impulses that are dawning across the region would be eclipsed by the darkest form of dictatorship, as repressive leaders concluded that violence is the best strategy to cling to power,” the Baptist Press reported.

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Jordan fights for possession of Christian books that may precede writings of St. Paul

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 11:05 AM PDT

Jordan is fighting to take possession of some 70 books that may, if authentic, precede the writings of St. Paul.

The books, which were found in a Jordanian cave, that tell of how Jesus died on the cross, rose from the dead, and details the birth of Christianity, The Daily Mail said.

A number of rare documents from the same era were discovered in the same cave in the past. However, these books are different. They were discovered between 2005 and 2007 when a flash flood took place in the valley, which led to the exposure of two alcoves inside the cave. One of the alcoves bore the sign of a menorah, or the Jewish religious candlestick symbol, BBC News said.

Historically, Christians fled Jerusalem in 70 AD after its fall, and sought refuge in Jordan, The Daily Mail said. According to BBC News, a Jordanian Bedouin found the books in the alcoves, then an Israeli Bedouin got possession of them and illegally smuggled them into Israel.

The Israeli however said the books were kept in his family line for over 100 years, BBC News said. A British team that is examining the books fears the Israeli might sell some of the books in the black market—or worse—might end destroy them, The Daily Mail said.

David Elkington, a British archeological and religious history expert is spearheading British efforts to get the books to a Jordanian museum. He told The Daily Mail, “It is vital that the collection can be recovered intact and secured in the best possible circumstances, both for the benefit of its owners and for a potentially fascinated international audience.”

Elkington, one of the few who examined the books, told The Daily Mail they are “the major discovery of Christian history. It is a breathtaking thought that we have held these objects that might have been held by the early saints of the Church.”

Ziad al-Saad, director of Jordan’s Department of Antiquities told BBC News the books may have been made by Jesus’ followers within decades of the crucifixion. If so, “They will really match, and perhaps be more significant than, the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

Saad told BBC News, “[I]t seems that we are looking at a very important and significant discovery, maybe the most important discovery in the history of archaeology,” although he said more verification is needed.

Each of the 70 books contain between five to 15 pages cast in lead, the size of a credit card, and bound with metal rings. The text is in an Ancient Hebrew code. Elkington told BBC News that if the books are truly of early Christian, rather than Jewish, origin then they are extremely rare and valuable.

Elkington saw indications of early Christian origin, including Christian symbols of Jesus alongside symbols of God on the covers and some pages of the books. He told BBC News, “It’s talking about the coming of the messiah.”

Elkington told BBC News, “In the upper square [of one of the book covers] we have the seven-branch menorah, which Jews were utterly forbidden to represent because it resided in the holiest place in the Temple in the presence of God. So we have the coming of the messiah to approach the holy of holies, in other words to get legitimacy from God.”

Philip Davies, an Old Testament expert from Sheffield University noted a map of Jerusalem, the holy city, and a cross in the foreground. He told BBC News, “ I was dumbstruck. That struck me as so obviously a Christian image.”

Davies told BBC News, “There is a cross in the foreground, and behind it is what has to be the tomb [of Jesus], a small building with an opening, and behind that the walls of the city. There are walls depicted on other pages of these books too and they almost certainly refer to Jerusalem.”

The cross is shaped like a capital T, (the crosses of Roman crucifixions). Davies told BBC News, “It is a Christian crucifixion taking place outside the city walls.”

Margaret Barker, Society for Old Testament Study, said many of the books are sealed adding, “The Book of Revelation tells of a sealed book that was opened only by the Messiah. Other texts from the period tell of sealed books of wisdom and of a secret tradition passed on by Jesus to his closest disciples. That is the context for this discovery,” The Daily Mail reported.

A translation of one part of the text with a menorah says, “I shall walk uprightly,” which appears in the Book of Revelation, and which may refer to the resurrection, BBC News said.

Timing of artifacts

Metallurgical tests of some books indicate the first century AD, The Daily Mail said, although this does not mean that all the books come from the same time period.

Corrosion of some of the pages, experts told The Daily Mail, would be impossible to produce artificially. If the dating is correct, these books could predate St. Paul’s writings and be some of the earliest Christian writings.

BBC News said, “Never has there been a discovery of relics on this scale from the early Christian movement, in its homeland and so early in its history.”

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Troubling trends for U.S. homeschoolers are cited by college chancellor

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 11:05 AM PDT

Troubling trends are arising in the U.S. regarding homeschooling, a college chancellor said recently.

Michael Farris, chancellor of Patrick Henry College, said some states seem to be imposing legal impediments to make it more difficult for parents to home school their own children, Florida Baptist Witness said.

Farris told Florida Baptist Witness, “I think what we’re seeing is unfortunately a growing trend.” New Hampshire’s state Supreme Court, for example, is set to rule on a case between divorced parents regarding their daughter’s education.

The father’s lawyer said the parents do not have any constitutional right to home school. The father said Christian homeschooling isolates the child. A lower court ordered the child to go to public school, The Florida Baptist Witness reported.

The mother sees this as a violation of her parental rights. Rep. Jim Parison of New Hampshire, as a result, entered the Homeschool Freedom Act to protect parents who home school from government interference, Florida Baptist Witness said.

Incredibly dangerous

Farris, who is with the Home School Legal Defense Association, considers the case in New Hampshire “an incredibly dangerous development,” because the mother was teaching her child a belief system, Florida Baptist Witness reported.

Farris said the troubling trend came in three waves. The first wave took place years ago when the quality of education through home schooling was questioned, Florida Baptist Witness said.

The second wave claimed (proven wrong) that home schooled students are socially inept. The third wave is the assertion that Christian homeschooling teaches values that are dangerous to the children and society, Florida Baptist Witness reported.

The values being questioned in the third wave are the belief that homosexuality is sinful, that men should lead the family, and that Jesus is the only way to God, Florida Baptist Witness said.

Farris wrote, “I doubt that many of you have any idea of the intensity and breadth of the elitist movement that is taking dead aim at our movement,” according to Florida Baptist Witness.

Farris cited law professors from George Washington University, Emory University and Northwestern University who have already called for a ban of religious education in private schools and in homeschooling, Florida Baptist Witness said.

Farris said, “Religious liberty means the government has no jurisdiction over what you believe and the soul is at liberty. No one can be punished for what they believe or don’t believe,” Florida Baptist Witness reported.

German experience

The third wave becomes more worrisome in light of the German experience, particularly of Juergen and rosemarie Dudek, who were prosecuted for the “criminal offense” of homeschooling their children, WND said.

Judge Herwig Mueller who prosecuted the family from Achfield said to the Dudeks, “You don’t have to worry about the fine, because I will send you to jail,” according to WND.

Another high-profile case involved Melissa Busekros, 15, who in Jan. 2007 was taken by police officers, upon court order, to a psychiatric ward for being homeschooled, according to WND.

WND reported that German homeschoolers can be fined thousands of dollars, may be jailed, or their children may be placed in psychiatric facilities with a diagnosis of “school phobia,” WND reported. Because of this hundreds of homeschooled families either go into hiding or leave the country.

Nazi era law

The law against homeschooling came from the Nazi era when Hitler decided that only the state should educate children, and all schools and school issues were placed under his Ministry of Education, according to WND.

In 1937 Hitler said, “This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing,” WND reported.

Growing numbers

Farris said homeschooling is undergoing more government scrutiny in the US because its numbers are growing. Farris said, “That’s what I think they don’t like. They don’t like seeing the next generation of top leaders being taught in a way that effectively transmits a Christian worldview,” Florida Baptist Witness reported.

A National Home Education Research Institute study said over two million children in the U.S. are homeschooled, and this is “rapidly becoming a mainstream education alternative,” Florida Baptist Witness said.

Florida Baptist Witness noted that in January homeschoolers taking standardized achievement tests scored an average 37 percentile points higher than the national average.”

Farris said, “The proof is in the pudding,” noting that “The executive editor of the Harvard Law Review right now was homeschooled. Homeschoolers that I’ve taught are now on full-ride scholarships at Pepperdine Law School, George Washington Law School, University of Virginia Law School and a number of others. Those are ones I personally taught,” Florida Baptist Witness reported.

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Afghan Christian detained for apostasy may face death penalty

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 11:05 AM PDT

A Christian rights worker said recently that another Afghan Christian is in jail and needs the help of the international community.

Aidan Clay, regional manager of the Middle East, International Christian Concern, said Shoaib Assadullah, 23, has been in jail since Oct. 21 for converting to Christianity, Allvoices reported.

Assadullah was arrested in Mazar-e-Sharif after giving a bible to a man who later reported the incident to local authorities, Allvoices said. While in prison, he has been physically abused and threatened with death by inmates.

Clay noted that another Afghan Christian, Said Musa, was released and granted asylum in Europe after nine months of abuse in jail, because of pressure from the international community including the U.S., Italy and other countries, Allvoices said.

In the same way, Clay told Allvoices that international diplomacy should be stepped up to help to secure the immediate release of Assadullah. Clay noted that while Musa was released amid a slew of international publicity, little progress has been made on behalf of Assadullah.

Clay expressed concern that Assadullah may be sentenced to death, the penalty for apostasy. Although Afghanistan’s constitution allows freedom of religion, apostasy falls under Islamic law, Allvoices reported.

In a letter that was shown to BosNewsLife and dated Feb. 17, Assadullah wrote, “Several times I have been attacked physically and threatened with death by fellow prisoners, especially [from members of the] Taliban [group] and anti-government prisoners who are in jail.”

Assadullah added, “These assaults on my human dignity have affected me negatively, close to the point of death,” according to BosNewsLife.

In another letter written by Assadullah dated Mar. 11, he wrote, “I am under emotional pressure from being in prison. Add to that the threat of being executed, constant insults and accusations, threats, cursing and being forced by other prisoners and by prison guards to do work for them… all because of prejudice against my different beliefs and my different ethnicity,” BosNewsLife reported.

Assadullah, on Mar. 24, said in a phone conversation that he would die for his Christian faith rather than return to Islam, according to BosNewsLife.

Clay told BosNewsLife that under President Hamid Karzai, “Afghanistan continues its anti-Christian crackdown and is far from altering any policies to protect apostates. The release of Musa was a great victory, but the battle carries on. The fight for religious freedom in Afghanistan is far from over.”

In a statement the U.S. State Department said, “The United States and its international partners remain committed to helping Afghans realize their vision for a country that is stable, democratic, and economically successful, and to an Afghan Government committed to the protection of women’s rights, human rights, and religious tolerance,” BosNewsLife reported.

In the Netherlands, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte promised to do “everything in his power to prevent executions of Christian converts,” BosNewsLife said.

It is estimated that there may be up to 10,000 Christian converts in Afghanistan, despite its being a highly Islamic nation where expressing one’s faith openly can lead to murder by militants, family members or government officials, BosNewsLife reported.

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