Leadingchurch.com

“The church was asking me to confess my sins, when I felt like God had done far worse things than I’ve ever done,” http://buff.ly/1BGx690 

Council on Foreign Relations

“Terrorism and all types of Islamophobia perpetuate each other and we stand against this.”

And the first comment in all caps

• Posted by Mahmoud RatebJanuary 12, 2015 at 1:43 pm

  IT IS INTERESTING THAT NO ONE CARED TO SHOW THE CORAAN”S VIEW.
  THE CORAAN ORDERS MOSLEMS IF THEY HEAR SOMEONE MAKING FUN OR MOCKING VERSES FROM THE CORAAN TO “NOT SIT WITH THEM UNTIL THEY CHANGE THE SUBJECT”
  BY ANALOGY ,THIS APPLIES TO ANYONE MOCKING THE PROPHET “PEACE BE UPON HIM”,
  THEREFORE THERE IS NO MENTION OF EVEN ARGUING WITH, LET ALONE KILLING SOMEONE FOR SUCH AN ACTION.
  FURTHERMORE A CIVILISED SOCIETY DOES NOT ALLOW ANY ONE TO MAKE FUN OF OTHERS’ BELIEFS UNDER THE BANNER OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSIONS.
  THEREFORE,I AM NOT CHARLIE

Is freedom of speech a religious commitment? 

“Religion” is a word that is terribly hard to define. How one defines the word is usually based on their religious beliefs.

“Freedom of speech” is considered to be a “right”, a concept that people MUST recognize so says the West.

This “must” has all of the feel of a religious assertion or religious dogma.

It is easy to see the Islamist attackers as religious, but what motivates the defenders of freedom of speech?

Dougherty argues that at heart secularism is twice fermented Christianity.

This post argues that Turkey’s noises show it to be insufficiently zealous in defending freedom of speech. Notice the first comment. Sure looks like a religious conflict to me.

If this is not a religious conflict, what kind of conflict is it? 

• New York Mag
• NY Times, feared reprisals

Dreher

Politico

RNS

Now 29 and living in West Greenwich, R.I., Brown tries to channel her abilities into helping others, starting as an energy healer. But she said it was difficult to get clients without some kind of official stamp of approval. In 2010, she turned to the Internet for help.

“Online ordination actually opened a lot of doors as far as doing any type of spiritual work, including energy healing,” Brown said.

Michael Dougherty

The great irony of Islam’s continued clashes with the Western way of life — whether its widespread riots over a YouTube video or the murderous actions of a crazed minority— is that it has revealed, to the surprise of everyone but Pope Emeritus Benedict, that modern secularism is a kind of epiphenomenon of Christendom.

To borrow from G.K. Chesterton, secularism is the second fermentation, where the wine of Christianity becomes the vinegar of laïcité. Force either of them into the mouth of a Muslim guest, and he will spit it out.

• Not all blasphemies are equal

Pissing on a Bible is similar to pissing on a Koran only as a chemical reaction of urea and pulp. As gestures of desecration they mean entirely different things.

When Westerners read the editorial from radical cleric Anjem Choudary, they are tempted to think he is stupid for asking why “why in this case did the French government allow the magazine Charlie Hebdo to continue to provoke Muslims…?”

“That’s not how it works here,” we want to reply. But Choudary’s view that the state authority is responsible for the moral and spiritual condition of the nation is quintessentially Islamic. It is a reflection of the fact that Islam’s great debates are centered on jurisprudence, on the right order of the ummah. This is very different from Christianity where the primary debates center around orthodox faith and morals withing the Church. In an odd way, Choudary’s complaint against France is a sign of assimilation. He expects France to assimilate to this vision of Islam. He offers France’s leaders the same complaint radical Muslim reformers always offer to lax Sultans and Caliphs.

To ask Muslims to respond peacefully to Charlie Hebdo‘s provocations makes absolute sense to me, because I want to continue to live by the norms set by a detente between secularism and Christian churches. I suspect many (perhaps most) Muslims want the same. But those Muslims who are faithful to a religious tradition concerned primarily with restoring fidelity to sources from the first three centuries of Islam were not a party to the secularist bargain. And we ought to be aware that we are asking them to live as Christians, and to be insulted like them, too.

Mennoworld

“In terms of views on both LGBTQ membership and leadership, Mennonite Church USA leaders have shifted dramatically,” writes Kanagy in his report. He compares the 2006 Church Member Profile survey, which he directed, with the current survey and cites two changes:

• In 2006, 14 percent of credentialed leaders stated they would accept a “practicing homosexual” as an ordained minister in their congregation. Today, 46 percent would.
• In 2006, 66 percent of leaders said they would not accept a “practicing homosexual” as a member of a congregation. Today, 47 percent would not accept an LGBTQ person who is not celibate as a member.

Only 8 percent feel there is no condition in which an LGBTQ individual can be a member of an MC USA congregation. The greatest amount, 39 percent, think only those who remain celibate should be members. Full membership without conditions was preferred by 32 percent, followed by 21 percent who think only those who are celibate or in a committed, monogamous relationship should be able to be members.

Leadership Journal