Tag: christian persecution

Put a Gun to their Head

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Maybe use of fear and violence isn’t the best way to teach about fear and violence.

Ashley Baxstrom:  This headline speaks for itself: “Pennsylvania Church Kidnaps Teens, Holds Them At Gunpoint, For ‘Learning Exercise.’”

It’s pretty much about exactly what you think it is. Officials at the Glad Tidings Assembly of God in Middleton, Pennsylvania, arranged for members of the church youth group to be actually, physically kidnapped from a meeting and transported to Pastor John Lanza’s house.

The 14-year-old girl interviewed by reporters said that two men armed with guns entered the room, put pillowcases over students’ heads, and pushed them into a van. Continue Reading →

Our Daily Links: While You Were Eating Fruitcake Edition

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Worth the Wait: It may have taken 1,500 years but the Talmud finally has an index.
Early Adopters: I’ve long said that religion and porn are the two first groups to adopt new technologies. In “Christianity and the Future of the Book” at The New Atlantis Alan Jacobs writes, “Religious communities have been the inventors, the popularizers, or the preservers of technologies.” (Jacobs doesn’t say anything about porn, alas.)
The Vatican has released its annual report on deaths of mission workers around the world. South America and Africa are highest on the list of dangerous continents.
Red Kettle Menace: The Salvation Army does great work but tis the season to hear more about their prayer-for-assistance policies, in this instance, regarding same-sex couples. (TR friend and co-conspirator Diane Winston has written about the Salvation Army in Red Hot and Righteous: the Urban Religion of the Salvation Army. Hear her talk about it here, in a 2009 interview with NPR.) Continue Reading →

Media's Muslim v. Christian Paradigm

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Abby Ohlheiser:  The State Department has weighed in on the case of Iranian Christian pastor, Youcef Nadarkhani, who was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to death for apostasy.  He’d be the first executed for that reason in Iran since 1990.  But this month, the Iranian Supreme Court offered him a way out: they’ve overturned the death penalty sentence, sent the case back to a lower court, and asked the pastor to repent.  The interesting part of the story is how Nadarkhani’s case has become part of an international game of chicken for power. Continue Reading →

Media’s Muslim v. Christian Paradigm

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Abby Ohlheiser:  The State Department has weighed in on the case of Iranian Christian pastor, Youcef Nadarkhani, who was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to death for apostasy.  He’d be the first executed for that reason in Iran since 1990.  But this month, the Iranian Supreme Court offered him a way out: they’ve overturned the death penalty sentence, sent the case back to a lower court, and asked the pastor to repent.  The interesting part of the story is how Nadarkhani’s case has become part of an international game of chicken for power. Continue Reading →