“As business capital is assumed to be both outside the intent of the prohibition and an indispensable element of the modern economy, it was considered appropriate to find a method to allow it,” says Rabbi Daniel Feldman of Yeshiva University. While some authorities historically opposed the heter iska, which is only to be used for business purposes, it is widely accepted as meeting both the letter and the spirit of the law, says Rabbi Feldman.

In our difficult economic times, interest-free loans may be more important than ever. In Dallas, the local Hebrew Free Loan Association offers a variety of them, including for life-cycle events, adoptions, home health care and education. And Hebrew free-loan societies boast inordinately low default rates of less than 1%. “There is a sense of religious obligation on both sides,” says Mr. Sarna.

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The West looks with great concern towards North Africa, with the changes in the countries marked by the so-called “Arab Spring”. This has led to the downfall of totalitarian regimes which once seemed untouchable! All this is about very complex movements, not only in the societies where it happens, but also involves struggles regarding international interests. Will the populations be able to “control the situation” and direct the changes to their common good? The situation is very complex. These very young democracies have entrusted the power to parties of Islamic matrix, and have come out with new realities causing alarm, especially among the youth, and in the Christians locally. One only needs to look at the results of the last elections in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco (a country not rocked by the Arab Spring but advancing seriously on the paths of reform through the will of King Mohammed VI).

These scenarios lead us to look at Islam and its spread in North Africa, taking into account the fact that the Christian presence goes back to six centuries before the birth of Islam, and that the Christian communities (Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant) are part and parcel of the local social fabric, a significant part of the cultural richness of the Countries and of the Region, and cannot be considered as a “foreign” body, or a “presence” affiliated to “something” western, as often seen by fundamentalist Islamic movements, motivated by ignorance or political interests!

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Mormons believe that vicarious baptisms give the deceased, who exist in the afterlife as conscious spirits, a final chance to join the Mormon fold, and thus gain access to the Celestial Kingdom. To Mormons, only members of the LDS priesthood possess the power to baptize.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a Baptist or a Buddhist,” said Kathleen Flake, a Vanderbilt University scholar who has studied the church, “it’s about who has the authority to perform the sacrament.”

Flake said Mormons are encouraged to baptize at least four generations of forebears to seal the family for eternity. So the LDS church has built the world’s most extensive genealogical library in Salt Lake City with 700 employees and more than 2 billion names.

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The growth of Islamic radicalism in Maldives can be traced to the beginning of the last decade. Like in Bangladesh, Pakistani jihadi groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba have been making inroads to indoctrinate young men in a conservative Sunni society, that has been bogged down with slow growth, political authoritarianism (until 2008, certainly) and mushrooming madrassas with Arab funds.

None of this is good news for India. Intelligence circles believe this is part of Pakistan’s strategic outreach, to penetrate Islamic jihadism in India’s periphery, which could be a constraining factor on India’s own development.

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Richard Dawkins was crossing proverbial swords with Giles Fraser, the Canon of St Paul’s, on the findings of a poll by his foundation which found that many people who describe themselves as Christian have low levels of belief and little or no practice.

Dr Dawkins claimed that self-identified Christians were “not really Christian at all” because an “astonishing number” couldn’t identify the first book in the New Testament (Matthew) during questioning for the poll.

Dr Fraser then challenged the country’s top Darwinist to name the full title of The Origin Of Species…[which Dr. Dawkins was unable to do]….Dr Dawkins later accused Dr Fraser of an “ambush”.

Read it all (requires subscription).

The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the news.

“We are outraged that such insensitive actions continue in the Mormon temples,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, a spokesman at the centre.

The Mormon religion allows baptism after death, and believes the departed soul can then accept or reject the baptismal rites.

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It all hinges on a basic misconception:

That somehow to create equality and space for minority faiths and cultures we need to erase our majority religious heritage.

But it is my belief that the societies we are, the cultures we’ve created, the values we hold and the things we fight for…

…stem from something we’ve argued over, dissented from, discussed and built up:

Centuries of Christianity.

It’s what the Holy Father called the “unrenounceable Christian roots of [our] culture and civilisation”.

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Andrew West: Are there any parties in the parliament that we in the west would recognise as being vaguely liberal, or social democratic?

Jess Hill: Yes, the Al-Wafd party, which is one of the oldest parties in Egypt, that was probably the third most popular party. And then there’s a conglomerate of smaller liberal parties. Really, the people calling the shots are the Brotherhood. And then in second priority is the Salafi party Al-Nour.

Andrew West: What implications do these results hold for the impending presidential elections in June?

Jess Hill: It certainly feels like every person you speak to has a different opinion. But essentially most people agree that a presidential candidate will need the backing of the Brotherhood in order to succeed. So, I think, you know, there’s a few favourites, there’s one candidate who is a former Muslim Brotherhood member, who has got a lot of respect from both people within the Brotherhood and from the secularists. That’s looking like a possibility, but you wouldn’t see somebody of the ilk of al-Barad’i, for example, who’s dropped out of the candidacy, winning the elections. They are definitely going to have to be able to step in line at least somewhat with the Brotherhood.

Andrew West: If the Islamists, broadly speaking, control almost three-quarters of the parliament, how monolithic or diverse is that Muslim block?

Jess Hill: It’s very diverse.

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Europe must hold back a wave of “intolerant secularisation” and stop denying its Christian heritage, Britain’s only Muslim Cabinet member will urge today, as part of an important ministerial visit to the Vatican.
In a robust address that will be seen as an attack on the High Court ruling last week forcing councils across Britain to stop holding prayers during formal meetings, Baroness Warsi will say that politicians “need to give faith a seat at the table in public life”.
In a landmark ruling, a judge backed a complaint from the National Secular Society and an atheist councillor that Bideford council in Devon had no formal powers to hold the prayers.

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(This is the poll mentioned in the preceding post–KSH).

When asked why they think of themselves as Christian, the research found that fewer than three in ten (28%) say one of the reasons is that they believe in the teachings of Christianity. People are much more likely to consider themselves to be Christian because they were christened or baptised into the religion (72%) or because their parents were members of the religion (38%) than because of personal belief.

The research sought to measure a number of Christian practices, including regular reading of the Bible and prayer outside church services, to see how prevalent these were amongst respondents self-identifying as Christian. Among the results, we find that:

The majority (60%) have not read any part of the Bible, independently and from choice, for at least a year….

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Many people who describe themselves as Christian have low levels of belief and little or no practice, according to new research.
They identify as Christian because they were Baptised or because their parents were Christian rather than because they believe in the teachings of the Church, according to a poll carried out by Ipsos MORI for the Richard Dawkins Foundation.
The poll, published today, comes the week before Dr Dawkins debates the question of human origins with the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams in Oxford.

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In a time when disdain for other faiths is commonplace, even blessed in some religious circles, how does a Bible study instructor contrast the teachings and doctrines of another tradition and his own without seeming intolerant? And conversely, can the increased sensitivity to multiculturalism and religious diversity in early 21st-century America gradually diminish the celebration of one faith tradition’s distinctive place in the theological spectrum?

“If you’re going to take your religion seriously, you should feel it’s superior to others. Why else believe in it?” said Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. “On the other hand, society does require a hands-off attitude toward other faiths in order for us to all live together. It’s a dilemma.”

Thomas, who was on staff at Concordia Seminary in Clayton for 18 years, said he believes the Bible studies at St. Paul’s have stayed on the respectful side of the line. His goal with the classes, he said, is to explain the teachings of another religion and to ask why Lutherans don’t believe the same thing.

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I conclude from all this ”“ which could of course be spelled out at much more length ”“ that we can only understand early Christianity as a movement that emerges from within first-century Judaism, but that it is so unlike anything else we know in first-century Judaism (and the unlikenesses bear no resemblance to anything in the pagan world) that we are forced to ask what caused these mutations. The only plausible answer is that they were caused by the actual bodily resurrection, into a transformed physicality, of Jesus himself. Put that in place, and everything is explained. Take it away, and everything remains puzzling and confused. Of course, there is a cost. One cannot simply say, ”˜Well, it looks as though Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead’ and carry on with business as usual. If it happened, it means that a new world has been born. That, ultimately, is the good news of Easter, the good news which the rationalism of the Enlightenment has tried to screen out and which the church, tragically, has often forgotten as well. But to address this we need to move to the next section of this lecture.

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What is the Anglican position on the issue?

The Anglican position is very clear. We stand on upholding the sanctity of human life. We condemn in totality the terror called Boko Haram. And that we denounce it because it denounces human worth by what it is doing. We are in a democracy where people are free to practice their religion anywhere they are. So we stand on that. That Christians or people of other faith anywhere should be allowed to practice their own faith, provided they do not infringe on other people’s faith, which I know the Christians would not.

Are you satisfied with efforts the Islamic leaders and governors of the north have made to curb the menace of Boko Haram?

well! I don’t know of the efforts they have made so far. But what I do know is that it is there. This people live with them. They know them. They can fish them out, but they are not doing it. By so doing, they are obstructing the course of justice. As such they are not contributing to the well being of Nigeria. This is because people are doing certain things that are evil, and you know them. Like in Ekpoma here, if people are doing certain things we know them. And so, you see arrest being made. But when you shield them, like the man who escaped, is that not a case of protection? That is a case of protection. This thing is happening in the north. There is governance in the north. All of the governments are represented in the north. They cannot say they don’t know them. If they say they don’t know them, it means they are not doing their work.

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Coverage of this story has almost invariably been framed as a conflict between the federal government and the Catholic bishops. Zeroing in on the word “contraception,” many commentators have taken delight in pointing to surveys about the use of contraceptives among Catholics, the message being that any infringement of religious freedom involves an idiosyncratic position that doesn’t affect that many people.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception (not to mention abortion and surgical sterilization) has been clear, consistent and public. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s decision would force Catholic institutions either to violate the moral teachings of the Catholic Church or abandon the health-care, education and social services they provide the needy. This is intolerable.

And while most evangelicals take a more permissive view of contraception, they share with Catholics the moral conviction that the taking of human life in utero, whether surgically or by abortifacient drugs, violates the basic human right to life.

Read it all (it has different authorship and is in a different publication than the one post earlier today).

[Archbishop Timothy Broglio] wrote in a letter that “The federal government, which claims to be ‘of, by and for the people,’ has just dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful. It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle.”

However, it was another passage that seems to have triggered alarms at the Army office of the Chief of Chaplains.

“We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law,” stressed Broglio. “People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens. … In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same.”

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The Muslim Brotherhood on Thursday demanded that Egypt’s military rulers cede control of the government, stepping closer to a long-anticipated confrontation between the ruling generals and the Islamist-dominated parliament.

In a statement on its Web site and a television interview with one of its senior leaders, the Brotherhood called for the military to allow the replacement of the current prime minister and cabinet with a new coalition government formed by the parliament. That would amount to an immediate handover of power to civilians ”” the signature demand of street protesters but one the Brotherhood had previously rejected.

The Brotherhood, the formerly outlawed Islamist group that dominates the new parliament, had previously said it was content to wait for the generals who seized power with the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak to turn over power by a June deadline. And signs were accumulating of a general accord between the group and the military over the outlines of a new constitution expected to be ratified before the handover.

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Perhaps the gravest under-publicized atrocity in the world is the persecution of Christians. A comprehensive Pew Forum study last year found that Christians are persecuted in 131 countries containing 70 percent of the world’s population, out of 197 countries in the world (if Palestine, Taiwan, South Sudan, and the Vatican are included). Best estimates are that about 200 million Christians are in communities where they are persecuted. There is not the slightest question of the scale and barbarity of this persecution, and a little of it is adequately publicized. But this highlights the second half of the atrocity: the passivity and blasé indifference of most of the West’s media and governments.

It is not generally appreciated that over 100,000 Christians a year are murdered because of their faith. Because Christianity is, by a wide margin, the world’s largest religion, the leading religion in the traditionally most advanced areas of the world, and, despite its many fissures, the best organized, largely because of the relatively tight and authoritarian structure of the Roman Catholic Church, the West is not accustomed to thinking of Christians as a minority, much less a persecuted one.

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What are the limits to raising our children as we see fit? Every parent, child, teacher and neighbour can relate to the question. It’s by no means a religious issue alone, but Canadians have seen it in the news lately with strong links to faith….

[For example], in Quebec, parents of various stripes have revolted against the province’s mandatory “ethics and religious culture” school course, which is seen as either too respectful of religion or not respectful enough….

Almost every Canadian would agree that parental rights stop short of killing one’s children, no matter what the creed. But clearly there are many grey areas in this debate, which Faith Exchange panelists have convened to discuss.

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Try this: place a forkful of food in your mouth. It doesn’t matter what the food is, but make it something you love ”” let’s say it’s that first nibble from three hot, fragrant, perfectly cooked ravioli.

Now comes the hard part. Put the fork down. This could be a lot more challenging than you imagine, because that first bite was very good and another immediately beckons. You’re hungry….

The concept has roots in Buddhist teachings. Just as there are forms of meditation that involve sitting, breathing, standing and walking, many Buddhist teachers encourage their students to meditate with food, expanding consciousness by paying close attention to the sensation and purpose of each morsel.

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We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway””an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.

The portrayal of Muslims as victims or heroes is at best partially accurate. In recent years the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries….

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Last week he did it again, wading into a discussion of money ”” or, rather, of the “very poor” who lack it ”” and succumbing to yet another pink slip of the tongue. Mitt Romney is forever being tripped up this election cycle by the topic of wealth.

Not, interestingly, religion. That was the angst last time around, and the extent to which the dynamic has changed, with mammon supplanting Mormon as the bejeweled albatross around his neck, was reflected in another recent comment of his, one that prompted less notice and was interpreted in a particular and highly revealing way….

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Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams met with Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar on Thursday during a week-long personal pilgrimage to Israel and the West Bank.

The office of the Diocese of Jerusalem of the Anglican Church said that during Williams’ visit he emphasized “the importance of constructive dialogue and co-existence between all religions,” and the need to “consolidate the peace process between the people of this region.”

Invited by the head of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem Bishop Suheil Dawani, Williams was on a private tour and so did not make any public statements.

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….compared to other religious Americans, the Romneys and other Mormons are fairly atypical when it comes to passing the plate. Across the rest of the religious landscape, tithing is often preached but rarely realized.

Research into church donations shows a wide range of giving, with Mormons among the most generous relative to income, followed by conservative Christians, mainline Protestants and Catholics last.

Over the past 34 years, Americans’ generosity to all churches has been in steady decline, in good times and in bad, said Sylvia Ronsvalle, whose Illinois-based Empty Tomb Inc. tracks donations to Protestant churches.

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Watch it all.

what I tried to convey remains true: There are unbridgeable gaps between traditional Christian orthodoxy and the theological positions taken by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As Brigham Young University professor Robert Millet notes, “Latter-day Saints are not in the line of historic Christianity and ”¦ do not accept the concepts concerning God, Christ, and the Godhead that grew out of the post-New Testament councils.” The theological affirmations contained in the great creeds of the historic church are held by Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants alike; the Mormon church teaches that all of these branches of the historic Christian family tree are apostate and not authentically Christian.

I know many individual Mormons and historic orthodox Christians who believe people in one another’s communities to be genuine followers of Jesus Christ. But the religious movements of historic Christianity on the one hand and Mormonism on the other do not recognize one another’s movements as Christian. That doesn’t mean individual people within those movements reject one another as citizens, or as political leaders ”” let alone as friends and colleagues. But it does mean that these religious traditions have things to say about one another.

Read it all but please note that what Mr. Poling attributes to Luther [“With Luther, I would rather be governed by an honest and capable man of a different religious faith than by a corrupt and ineffective politician who attended my church”] is something you often see quoted, but no one has ever been able to show me a reference where this was said in Luther’s own works [and I recall the now late Richard John Neuhaus saying much the same]. If any blog readers can find such a reference, do let me know–KSH.

Residents here on Friday will mark the second week under curfew and caution since Boko Haram terrorists stormed the city’s center, setting off multiple bombings and gun assaults that residents say killed at least 200 people.

The attacks have been followed by sporadic episodes of explosions, gunfire, and kidnappings attributed to Boko Haram, the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group that has since last year launched an increasing number of attacks in northern Nigeria. These continued threats have forced police to extend a curfew put in place after attacks on Jan. 20 and to lengthen it by one hour. Offices, stores, and restaurants now must close and all residents must be off the streets from 6 p.m. until 7 a.m.””in a city of about 9 million that is Nigeria’s second largest….

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Arch-Bishop Peter Akinola, a retired Primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), has urged Christians to remain peaceful and shun retaliatory attacks against their Muslims brothers.

Akinola made the plea at a thanksgiving service to mark the 80th birthday of Justice Adolphus Karibi-Whyte at St Cyprian Anglican Church in Port Harcourt.

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I think of the heroes of my lifetime, leaders from Martin Luther King to Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, who gave the hopeless hope; people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett who taught us that the best thing you can do with money is give it away in a noble cause; and the unsung heroes of our hospitals, schools and local communities who daily remind us that happiness lies in what we give to the world not what we take from it. Some of these had power, others didn’t, but what made them great was influence, the way they inspired others and spoke to the better angels of their nature.

Not all of us have power. But we all have influence, whether we seek it or not. We make the people around us better or worse than they might otherwise have been. Worse if we infect them with our materialism or cynicism, better if we inspire them with what Wordsworth called “the best portion” of a good life, our “little, nameless, unremembered acts / of kindness and of love.” That quiet leadership of influence seeks no power but it changes lives. In tough times like now we need it more than ever.

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Thousands of mourners in Nigeria have attended the burial service for people killed at a church on Christmas Day.

The BBC’s Chris Ewokor at St Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla near the capital, Abuja, said the service sheets listed the names of 43 victims.

The militant Islamist group Boko Haram said it carried out a series of attacks on 25 December 2011.

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