“Faith Healing” Church Leaves Staggering Number of Child Deaths

Many of the infants, children and teens connected to a faith healing community with roots in Idaho and Oregon who have died all have one thing in common: Their last names. Reporters for TV station KATU have been following this story for several years and note that local cemeteries reveal the recurrence of certain family names, but recently a reporter was tipped off concerning ten new deaths over the last couple of years.

I learned of this from a short post that Rick Hiebert did at Bene Diction Blogs On. The church community in question sees this as a religious liberty issue; that they are within their rights to choose to let their children’s life hang in the balance of prayers offered on their behalf, even though our modern world provides a medical option.

The story links to this video at KATU-TV. (Text provided.) You’re encouraged to watch it, but it is both sad and disturbing.

The Wikipedia article on the Followers of Christ linked above notes:

…The church is also known for legalism  and a male-dominated society.  The members of the church frequently greet each other with kisses on the lips;  members of the church are often pejoratively referred to as “kissers” by others in Oregon City, and in other communities where large concentrations of Followers of Christ are found.  According to church members, children raised in the church attend   but do not socialize outside the church once reaching middle-school age.

During the latter part of the twentieth century, the church began to attract attention from authorities in the state of Oregon due to an unusually high mortality rate among its children…

Canadian sidebar: “An Alberta, Canada couple who were members of a different church were successfully prosecuted by authorities when their child died under similar circumstances; the law there did not provide the same faith-healing exemptions that were found in Oregon.” (Wikipedia)

Wednesday Link List

Here’s our deal:  I find ’em, you click on ’em.

• Pants on Fire Department: Apparently Perry Noble may have fudged some stats on church attendance in his home state when he was trying to justify some church expansion.  
• This is a must read, especially for women who have a man in their life (father, brother, son, friend) who is going where he shouldn’t go online. Check out Four Reasons Why Men Like Porn.
  
• Two quick posts about actor Andy Griffith who passed away last week: Ron Edmondson on how Andy was prepared to die;  and a Christianity Today post on the secret to understanding life in the Town of Mayberry.
  
• If Solomon* were alive today, instead of the Proverbs 31 text we know, he might have written something like what Dennis Muse posted about what makes a girl beautiful. (*Or Lemuel; see comments!)
  
• An eight-year old girl discovers that the dinosaur pictured in the brochure for the IMAX show at the show at the Smithsonian is actually from (gasp!) The Creation Museum.
  
• Is this religious persecution? An Arizona man’s weekly Bible studies at his home have cost him $12,000 in fines and two months in jail, because he was violating the building code.
  
• Christian bookstores may be disappearing, but according to Rachel Held Evans, their influence isn’t. She thinks their conservatism is choking author creativity.
  
• Lisa Robinson thinks that having a “life verse” isn’t a good idea for four reasons, including that it isn’t a nice thing to do to the verse.
  
• This one was found linked on Rachel’s blog this weekend: If you are feeling in a silly mood or need to entertain the junior high youth group this weekend, here are The Top Ten Zombie Scenes in the Bible. And here’s a transparent look at the subject of repentance.  Good explanation of the phrase in Matthew, “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.”
  
• Darrell at SFL explains why, in fundamentalist circles, many people have the calling but only a few have the job.
  
• Blog Discovery of the Week Department:  Caleb Jennings Breakey, an author with two books slated for Harvest House Publishers in each of 2013 and 2014.
  
• An internal link here back to 2009: If you’re planning small group ministry for the fall, here’s how National Capital Church (Mark Batterson) allows free-market principles to guide the birth of small groups.
  
• This one will be eight days old when you read it, but it supplies some background into the injury suffered by author and missionary Steve Saint.
  
• Apparently not all scientists are happy with the term “God Particle” for the Higgs-Boson. But you saw that coming, right?
  
• And if the universe is the answer, what is the question? Answers in Genesis weighs in on Higgs-Boson.  (Link is correct, go to the second item.)
  
• Yes, we saw that piece about the “whites only” Christian conference, and no, that could never happen in Canada (at least they wouldn’t be able to advertise it.)
  
• Christian Piatt shares Ten Clichés Every Christian Should Avoid. I guess every blog post happens for a reason.
  
• If you happen to be in my part of the world on Sunday, August 5th, Canadian male vocalist and storyteller Steve Bell will be doing a rare appearance here — the only one on the current tour — with the Steve Bell Trio.
  
• Matt Chandler is offering a free chapter preview of his newest book, Explicit Gospel.
  
• Check out the growth of the YouVersion Bible app — click the image to see the app’s blog, or click here to go straight to YouVersion.
  

One “Religion” Gets Preferred Advertising Worth Millions Daily

Their followers maintain religious devotion to their every pronouncement.  Their right to millions of dollars of free newspaper space around the world is never questioned, in fact many of those papers pay them for inclusion in their print and online editions.

These same media outlets are very cautious about granting space of any kind to Jewish, Christian or Muslim faith groups because that would be “sectarian” and they don’t want to be seen as promoting this or that religion.  So why is an exception made for this one group?

They, of course are astrologers and their daily encyclical is usually called “Your horoscope.”  Their belief system is secularized predestination — Calvinists, take note — believing that our lives are guided by the stars, in various ways, depending on the star (or Zodiac) sign in place at our time of birth.

My usual tongue-in-cheek reply to this is, “I don’t believe in astrology, but then again, we Geminis are natural skeptical.”

Kidding aside, why does one faith group get preferential treatment?   And how can any media outlet turn down any request from any religious group when they already grant one unfettered access to their readers?

Comments:  This is a piece about press discrimination or media favoritism.  Comments as to the merits of astrology will be deleted.

Ash Wednesday Link List

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the 40 days of Lent.

Some weeks the link list is rather lame, but this week, any one of these links could have been expanded into a full post.

Checking out a few of these takes time, but this week I urge you to make the time for topics here that interest you.

• A movie originally scheduled for release in 2007 providing scientific verifcation of Bible continues to grow in scope, sometimes crossing into new political sensitivities.   Read the ongoing story from WorldNetDaily about the film, The Exodus Conspiracy.
• Brian McLaren calls him “the Emergent Buddhist.”  The  YouTube  vid title is “Zen Monk Hip-Hop Rap & The Monk Bar.”  Gee…I wonder where they’re borrowing these concepts from?   Do they have megatemples?  See it here.
• If you’re in children’s ministry, you need to read this.   We already know Gen-X and Generation-Y.   Now read about Generation-Z.
• Here’s a freedom of religion story that has attracted nearly 700 comments at USAToday:  Muslims have announced that airport body scanners violate Islamic law.   The story is no surprise, really, but keep reading,  it’s the comments that reflect the American mood, running about 20:1 along the lines of, “If you don’t like it, you can walk.”   There’s definitely a lot of anger out there.
• Matt Appling at The Church of No People blog and Pastor of Levi’s House inteviews athiest Bruce Sheiman, author of An Athiest Defends Religion (Alpha Books, 2009).   Sample quote: “…It is questionable whether there has actually been a rise in militant atheism. More likely, there has been an increase in the vociferousness of existing militant atheism.”
• Fellowship Church’s Ed Young becomes the latest pastor to come under news media scrutiny, though he seems to defend himself admirably in a 25 minute briefing to his church.   Here’s what channel 8 had to say (8 minutes long) and Ed’s response.   But not everybody was impressed.
• A Christian version of Second Life?   Apparently.   Read Virtual World News to find out about the upcoming Universe of Faith.   Seriously.
• New Blog of the Week:   Orthodoxie.   A sometimes humorous look at life from an Orthodox Church perspective from Fr. Joseph Honeycutt the author of  We Came, We Saw, We Converted. Start with this piece of Poetic Lenten Humor.
• An often seen blog on these link lists is Jeff McQuilkin, who steps into a gigantic minefield with this article on experiencing reverse prejudice.
• Church conflict.   The very words can raise blood pressure.  David Fitch at Reclaiming The Mission searches for balance between the autocratic approach to church government and the democratic approach; and finds it in The Incarnational Approach to Leadership.
  
• All you diehard, hardcore Rob Bell fans will want to check out this five-page article at Leadership Journal where he unpacks his preaching process and suggests that the results aren’t yet in as to a possible dark side of video preaching.
  
• I love the name of this Kentucky town:  Falls of Rough.   Poetic, huh?   Anyway the blog for the Yeaman Church of Christ there has a short post titled, Why Do I Need The Church.
• Greg Atkinson thinks the song Meteor Shower by Owl City represents the future of worship music.   Check out his thoughts, and then — ONLY if you live in the U.S. — check out the song at lala.com.
• Another Christian book, CD and DVD website, Title Trakk claims to have all the answers, reviews, interviews, etc., with, not surprisingly, the appropriate links to iTunes and A-zon, and other commission-paying sites.
  
• Tim Archer takes a somewhat op-ed view of everybody’s efforts in Haiti, and expresses three concerns about the relief frenzy.
  
• Mark Driscoll’s book for men, Porn Again Christian is still available for free online reading at Re:Lit.   Mark doesn’t pull any punches or waste words on this topic.
  
• This week’s comics are from Joe McKeever at Baptist Press (upper) and Australian John Cook at A Time to Laugh

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Switzerland Votes to Prohibit Minarets

I never knew when I wrote my original post on this subject on September 18th, that when the vote took place two months later, it would generate so many new visits here.

According to traffic on this blog on the days leading up to and after the Swiss voted on the weekend to prohibit Muslim mosques from constructing minarets (the spire shaped towers) that are used to call the faithful to prayer, this is an issue for which there is intense interest, most probably because it  has a bearing on religious freedom not only in Switzerland, but also where you live, and around the world.

To see a short 2-minute report on the issue as it made news in Canada, you can watch this one at CBC News.  Although the post is quite sweeping in its coverage of the vote, the title — not fully explored — is intriguing, “Could a Minaret Ban Happen Here:  An Examination of What Might Happen if Canadian Tolerance Weakens.”   Did Swiss tolerance weaken?  Or was it never truly there in the first place?

Here’s a commentary at Beliefnet that also summarizes what happened if you’re coming to this for the first time:

All Muslims are Taliban, Islamophobia is the new anti-Semitism, and Shari’a is the new Protocols of the Elders of Zion. That’s the operational reality that Muslims in Europe must acknowledge, in the wake of a referendum to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland:

In a vote that displayed a widespread anxiety about Islam and undermined the country’s reputation for religious tolerance, the Swiss on Sunday overwhelmingly imposed a national ban on the construction of minarets, the prayer towers of mosques, in a referendum drawn up by the far right and opposed by the government.

The referendum, which passed with a clear majority of 57.5 percent of the voters and in 22 of Switzerland’s 26 cantons, was a victory for the right. The vote against was 42.5 percent. Because the ban gained a majority of votes and passed in a majority of the cantons, it will be added to the Constitution.

The Swiss Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but the rightist Swiss People’s Party, or S.V.P., and a small religious party had proposed inserting a single sentence banning the construction of minarets, leading to the referendum.

Civil Libertarians were quick to decry the results.  Even The Vatican condemned the loss of freedom of religion.   One political writer and talk-radio host suggested that the vote will have both a cause and effect influence on Switzerland’s future immigration dynamics.   Another writer suggests that the vote now introduces a whole new set of problems.

The Muslim blog, Islam in Europe, notes reactions from several different countries.    A gay Canadian blogger suggests that Islamophobic and Homophobic groups share a common strategy.

As you can see, there is no end of coverage on this over the last few hours.   So I contacted our anonymous correspondent in Switzerland from the September blog post for a grassroots reaction, which gets the last word:

It seems that the result of the referendum came as a surprise to everyone.  I think even people that voted in support of the ban were surprised that it went through.

The media here has gone crazy of course, saying it shows that the Swiss are afraid of Muslims, that the vote was decided by fear.  I personally don’t think that’s true.  It’s not like the Swiss are going to tear down the minarets that are already built, mosques have not been forbidden and the Muslims are not being expelled from the country.  They have the right to meet, to practice their religion and to have their mosques.  It’s been said in the media that a lot of them meet in old warehouses or industrial buildings, but so do most evangelical Christians.  (The only Protestant churches here are state owned and run.)  And it’s not like Christians are allowed to go into a Muslim country to build a cathedral.  I feel like that’s more the point.  It’s not a vote of fear, but of fairness.  If people want to move to another country and integrate into that country, there needs to be a bit of give and take.  Like I said before, they are still allowed to practice Islam, still allowed to build mosques.  Religion is not a building.  A church is more than four walls and a spire with a cross on the top.  It’s not a vote banning Islam, it’s a vote banning towers.

The other interesting thing is that, in our canton (province) only 52% of eligible voters actually voted.  It would be interesting to know what everyone else thinks…

And in the wake of all this, people are not talking about the fact that the Swiss also voted to keep exporting arms to other countries.  Why is everyone so concerned that we can’t build a tower, and not concerned about people killing each other with Swiss army material?  Sometimes I wonder about the media’s priorities…