A ministry to baptist preachers and churches
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Christianheadlines.com
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A higher percentage of young women have left organized religion and identify as religiously unaffiliated than their male counterparts, prompting concerns about the future of religion in the United States, according to a recent survey.?
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Pastors and religious liberty advocates worry the government's effort to manage religion will bring tighter control.Operating a church in Vietnam just became even more difficult thanks to new government regulations that went into effect over the weekend. Under Decree 95, the government will now require religious groups to submit financial records and allow local government officials to suspend religious activities for unspecified “serious violations.”Nguyen Ti Dinh of Vietnam’s religious affairs committee said the guidelines will improve how the government manages religion by implementing uniform measures for the 2018 Law on Belief and Religion, which requires religious groups to register with the government. Observers believe the decree is Vietnam’s attempt to demonstrate to the international community that it is trying to increase religious liberty and to get off the US State Department’s Special Watch List for countries engaged in religious freedom violations.Yet religious liberty advocates and local church leaders believe the new rules will do the opposite. Instead of making it easier to register churches, the government is requiring more oversight and control. If the Vietnamese government is trying to show the international community that it is serious about religious freedom, noted Hien Vu, Vietnam program manager of the Institute for Global Engagement (IGE), it needs to explain how the new policy would achieve that.“With this decree, it’s like Vietnam shot themselves in the foot,” Vu said.The Southeast Asian country, where Christians make up 8 percent of the population, is ranked No. 35 in the Open Doors’ list of most difficult countries to be a Christian. While Christians can worship freely in bigger cities, believers among ethnic minority groups and in rural areas still face ...Continue reading...
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CT's outgoing Asia editor recalls how God led him to America, toward the Christian faith, onto the internet, and outward to serve the global Chinese church.I was born in southwest China, in the Ganzi (Garzê) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province. Only a few days after birth, I was sent to Chengdu, the province’s capital city. My sister and I were raised by our grandmother while my parents, both medical doctors, were sent by the Communist Party to the rural Tibetan area many high mountains away from the city, where children could not get a decent education.I knew at a very young age that I had to get outstanding grades to enter college and avoid living in the cold and poor mountainous area. I studied hard and excelled in school.At age 16, I went to Shanghai to study chemistry at Fudan University, one of China’s top schools. This was in the 1980s, after China had opened its door to the world. At this time, Chinese universities were quite liberal and tolerant of free thinking, and Fudan was known as one of the most “Westernized” universities.In college, I began to rebel against indoctrination into official Communist ideology, and I wanted to learn more about Western thought and culture. But my worldview had been influenced by years of atheist education. I thought I did not believe in anything and had no interest in any religion.After graduation, I went back to Chengdu and started to work in a research institute as a polymer scientist. After work, I played a lot of mahjong with gambling late at night, but I was unhappy in my heart. After the crackdown on the student movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989, I was heartbroken and lost. (I witnessed similar forms of violent suppression on the streets of Chengdu.) I sank into deep darkness and hopelessness. I could not find an answer to my heart’s questions, and life became meaningless and ...Continue reading...
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A United Kingdom pastor has won the right to preach again on the city streets, three years after local police warned him not to criticize other religions or deliver sermons without their approval.
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Richard Dawkins's cultural “Christianity” could hollow out our faith far more efficiently than straightforward attacks.This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.One of the most notorious atheists has had a “come to Jesus” moment. He’s also figured out, at long last, a way to undermine the Christian religion he loathes. And, unlike his previous efforts, this one could actually work.Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, was among the most recognized proponents of New Atheism, a movement to reject the existence of God that had its golden era 15 or 20 years ago. Indeed, he was one of the movement’s “four horsemen,” along with Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.What was “new” about all of this was hardly the arguments, which were usually warmed-over Bertrand Russell. It was the fighting mood of it all. Audiences could feel a vicarious sense of “aren’t we naughty?” counterculturalism when they heard Hitchens ridiculing not just televangelists or abusive priests but Mother Teresa as a fraud. This theatricality eventually wore thin, until even fellow atheists seemed embarrassed by it.But now Dawkins emerges again, this time in a viral video arguing for Christianity … kind of. He notes the plummeting of church attendance and Christian identification in his country, the United Kingdom, and says that, on one level, he’s glad to see it. Yet on the other hand, Dawkins continues, he’s “slightly horrified” to see the promotion of Ramadan in the UK. After all, he’s a Christian in a Christian country.Lest anyone be confused, Dawkins made clear that he’s a “cultural Christian, … not a believer.” He loves the hymns and the Christmas carols and ...Continue reading...
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