Showing posts with label AMERICAS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AMERICAS. Show all posts

Tuesday 10 November 2020

Biden administration will likely seek to make its own stamp on Mideast

 say experts

President-elect Joe Biden speaking in Gettysburg, Pa., on Oct. 7, 2020

Michal Hatuel-Radoshitzky, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, states it is safe to assume that the incoming president’s initial energies will be internally focused due to the coronavirus and the economy. In addressing the Mideast, the priority is likely to focus on Iran and the nuclear deal, followed by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

(November 9, 2020) U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s yet-to-be-confirmed victory over incumbent U.S. President Donald Trump has ushered in a flurry of questions in Israel over what a Biden-Harris administration would look like and how it would differ from the Obama administration specifically with regard to Israel.

Eytan Gilboa, an expert on American politics and foreign policy, as well as a senior research associate at the BESA Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, told JNS the next administration “will differ in certain areas” compared to Obama’s. 

“We should not expect much continuity,” he said. “Every president wants to leave their own imprint.”

Gilboa noted a few points. First, Biden’s top priorities will be domestic: dealing with the coronavirus, interracial relations and the economy.

Second, Biden’s ability to pass legislation will depend on the makeup of Congress and whether the Republicans or Democrats control the Senate.

Third, according to Gilboa, many of the so-called progressives, the radicals, “are anti-Israel and some are anti-Semitic.”

“The question is how powerful they will be,” said Gilboa.

 

‘A need to change the sunset clause’

While Biden may not necessarily take a hard line against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “the people under him may not be so forgiving, as many are Obama veterans. These people are not very friendly [towards Israel]. The question is how much influence he will give them.”

With regard to policy, Gilboa said, “there will be continuity in terms of all bilateral relations, including intelligence coordination, security cooperation, joint maneuvers and development of missile defense systems. These will continue and perhaps improve.”

Gilboa suggested that Israel will likely need to be concerned about three issues. The first is the United Nations, where Biden is likely to renew American involvement and participation in U.N. international organizations such as the International Criminal Court and the U.N. Human Rights Council. The Trump administration spent four years lambasting the United Nations over its anti-Israel stance, and in 2019, Trump withdrew America from the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The second issue to concern Israel is Biden’s intention to work closely with Europe, which according to Gilboa, could be “problematic on issues such as Iran and the Palestinians.”

With regard to Biden’s approach to Iran and his intention to sign a new deal with the Islamic Republic, Gilboa said Israel should make every effort “to participate in the formulation of a new deal.”

He explained that Biden said he wants to negotiate a new deal with Iran and while Iran thinks it will be similar to the 2015 deal, it won’t. “Five years have passed, and there is a need to change the sunset clause,” he said.

In fact, UNSCR 2231’s section on the arms embargo against Iran already expires this year. United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) CEO Ambassador Mark D. Wallace has warned that the expiration of the arms embargo “will have immediate destabilizing consequences for Yemen, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Israel. Terror organizations like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, the Al-Ashtar Brigades, Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis are the likely beneficiaries of this sunset provision.”

Gilboa said any new deal with Iran “will have to be tougher and include issues left out of the original deal such as the development of ballistic missiles.”

Iran would like to negotiate, said Gilboa, but it insists the United States must abolish the economic sanctions as a precondition to any deal.

Regarding the Palestinians, Biden has said he won’t move the U.S. embassy back to Tel Aviv, though there are reports that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas will insist on it.

More worrying for Israel, is Biden’s intention to restore aid to the Palestinians and UNRWA, which could result in the financing of terror against Israel, and he has said he will reopen the PLO mission office in Washington.

“I doubt he will emulate Obama’s obsession with the peace process,” said Gilboa. “I do not see any major peace process or peace plan. I don’t think this is going to happen.”

The third issue that will concern Israel according to Gilboa related to the Abraham Accords that saw Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Sudan agree to normalize relations with Israel. Trump planned to add other countries such as Oman, Morocco, maybe Kuwait, and even perhaps Saudi Arabia. The reason was to counter Iran in the region.

Representatives of Iran and the P5+1 world powers pose for a photo in Vienna, Austria


Biden had applauded the Abraham Accords, but his top foreign-policy advisor, Tony Blinken, has said that the significance of the deals was “a little bit overstating” and noted that Israel had close ties with the countries under the Obama administration as well.

But Gilboa said that Iran will now give the United States an ultimatum. “If given the choice, Biden will choose Iran,” said Gilboa.

For its part, Israel and Arab Gulf state are reportedly moving to help the Trump administration levy a “flood” of sanction on Iran before Biden is sworn in reportedly out of concern that Biden could undo Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against the Islamic Republic.


‘Israel has changed, and Iran has changed’

So will a Biden administration be more pro-Israel than the Obama administration? Or less?

According to Michal Hatuel-Radoshitzky, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, “what was considered ‘pro-Israel’ in Obama’s term is not necessarily seen as ‘pro-Israel’ today.”

“Since Obama’s presidency America has changed; Israel has changed, and Iran has changed, as have the region and the world in general,” she said.

“Furthermore,” she added, “one has to take into account that similarly to American society, Israeli society is divided and multi-faceted with different sectors having completely different perceptions of what it means to be ‘pro-Israel.’ ”

Hatuel-Radoshitzky said that both Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have proven time and again that they are Israel’s allies.

“Among other things, they are committed to maintaining Israel’s QME [Qualitative Military Edge], and they have declared that they will not condition aid to Israel on the Israeli government’s policies vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” she said.

Whether the Biden administration will launch an effort to create a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, Hatuel-Radoshitzky agreed with Gilboa, saying that it is “safe to assume that the Biden administration’s initial energies and resources will be internally focused. In addressing the Middle East, the priority will likely be addressing the JCPOA. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will come in only later.”

According to Hatuel-Radoshitzky, Israel should prepare for a Biden administration by making a “proactive effort to establish open and direct communication lines with Democratic Party officials to transform Israel into a bipartisan issue.”

She said Israel should not fear the renewal of Palestinian aid, but should rather perceive it “as an opportunity towards increased US leverage vis-à-vis the Palestinians who will once again perceive the United States as an acceptable mediator.”

Hatuel-Radoshitzky said she believes that returning U.S. aid to UNRWA or returning the United States to the UNHRC or to UNESCO “could play out very positively for Israel if conditioned upon important changes in the way these bodies function. In other words, there is an excellent opportunity to increase U.S. influence in a way that will be conducive to Israel, too.”

Top 5 challenges for the church after this election

Amid all the analysis and opining about the 2020 presidential election, one thing must not be overlooked: The church’s witness in the world has been damaged almost beyond repair.


The politicization of the faith, the abandonment of biblical teaching, the hypocrisy, the sacrifice of truth, the love of money and status — all these have caused the church to lose relevance and authority to speak to modern culture. Of course, erosion of trust in the church did not begin with this presidential election or the 2016 election, although the divisions of the past four years certainly accelerated the trend.

It wasn’t that long ago that American conservatives — and especially Christian conservatives — cared deeply and passionately about absolute truth and strict morality and certain reality. And it wasn’t that long ago that American progressives were accused of promoting an “everybody do your own thing” mentality that empowered looser morality, sexual ethics, and doubts that there is such a thing as absolute truth.

Yet today, it is the progressives who are most likely to be fighting the onslaught of misinformation, fake news, conspiracy theories, and outrageous lies by demanding a consistent standard around a flagpole of definitive truth.

No wonder we’re all confused; some would say the tables have turned and the sides have switched uniforms.

Every publication and pundit out there is commenting on how this election has revealed the deep divides in American society that might as well have us living in two separate universes. And in the midst of this, pastors are left to try to make peace in their churches. Is this possible?

Here are five challenges pastors and church leaders face in these post-election days:


Avoiding both-sides-ism

The natural tendency for peacemakers is to point out that there has been wrong done on both sides and to call everyone to the middle through confession and forgiveness. That will not work in the present moment. Although both sides may feel equally offended by the other, both sides have not acted in the same way or with the same malice. Each “side” must be dealt with on its own merits and actions, just like good parenting requires dealing with each child as an individual. Both-sides-ism is a lazy and unrealistic way out of this quagmire.

“Both-sides-ism is a lazy and unrealistic way out of this quagmire.”


Restoring respect for truth

This is not simply a matter of one side believing the truth and the other side believing a lie. It is, instead, a case of both sides firmly believing their views are true. Except in rare cases, it is not possible for two opposing ideas to be simultaneously true. Somehow, we’re going to have to come to an agreement on what is true and what is false in the real world. Coronavirus has shown us the peril of living in a world of lies. Eventually, lies will get you killed. If the church can’t help us sort out truth from lies, we don’t need to stay in business.

“Coronavirus has shown us the peril of living in a world of lies. Eventually, lies will get you killed.”


Overcoming the love of money

For the church, this is a debt that never gets paid. We’ve got to keep telling this story over and over. Remember that Jesus talked more about money than any other topic recorded in the Gospels. Getting this right sets up all other successes. And yet time and again — in both Democratic and Republican campaigns — appealing to personal economic interests tops all other concerns. Our society has conditioned us to care most about our own economic well-being; the Bible should condition us to see that the love of money is the root of all evil.


Revaluing community

Too often, the church has portrayed “community” as a kind of forced uniformity or assumed uniformity or even homogeneity. We go to church and assume everyone else there thinks like we do, and we tend to cluster with others who look like we do. We foster a community that is as shallow and superficial as a Sunday morning hello at a coffee station. True community places us in the same boat together with everyone given an oar. We’ve got to figure out how to row the boat without capsizing. This is a lesson the church should model. We should be handing out oars, not complaining because the boat is taking on water.

“True community places us in the same boat together with everyone given an oar.”


Loving neighbor

I long for the old days when we could debate what was the best way to love our neighbors, meaning, for example, is it better to give a homeless person money, job training, or food. When we agree we must love our neighbors, we can engage in helpful conversation about how to fulfill the command of Jesus. Sadly, the debate today has moved to another realm: “Must we help that pitiful person?” Or a somewhat gentler adaptation: “That’s not my problem to worry about.” Getting this fundamental teaching of Jesus right would set in motion a lot of cures for the other things that ail us. We love God by loving neighbors as ourselves.


Underlying all this is the need to restore trust in the church. To get there, the root question pastors may need to face is whether they want to serve the church that has been or the church that will be. I’m reminded of our church’s journey toward LGBTQ inclusion four years ago when an older member said: “I know where the trend is going on this and that in 20 years this will not be an issue at all. But can’t we older folks just have our church the way it has been until we die?”

Whatever the issue — don’t get hung up only on the LGBTQ illustration — the church cannot regain the trust of the community until we’re able to see all the community around as beloved of God and not just targets for our conversion.

Church consultant Mark Tidsworth hit this nail right on the head in a recent BNG story: “If you want more young people in the church, you are going to have to drop the belief that social justice issues are off-limits while focusing only on personal piety and salvation. People under 35 write us off as irrelevant because we are unwilling to address the issues of the day.”

It’s time to flip the script and show the world that the authentic church of Jesus Christ solves problems rather than creating problems, tells the truth, loves people more than money, and builds authentic, diverse community.


Credit to Mark Wingfield, serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global, where this article was first published.

Saturday 31 October 2020

‘All Souls to the Polls’ engages churches to make voting fun and accessible

All Souls to the Polls


Contentious, high-stakes elections are nothing new to Darryl Warren Aaron or his members at Providence Baptist Church in Greensboro, N.C.

But there is a different feel surrounding the 2020 general election, said the pastor of the city’s oldest Black congregation. “It takes me back to when (President Barack) Obama ran the first time. There’s an energy. There’s a drive. It feels existential, as if people are recognizing that there’s power in the vote.”

In an effort to share that passion, Providence Baptist and other congregations in North Carolina and additional battleground states have partnered with civic and social justice groups to drive transportation-challenged voters to the polls during early voting periods and on Election Day.

And with guidance and funding from the New Moral Majority, food trucks are being parked at or near some voting sites to feed and encourage voters waiting in long lines, said Ryan Eller, co-founder and executive director of the progressive faith-based political action committee.

Darryl Warren Aaron


Ministers are being encouraged to serve as chaplains to encourage voters waiting in long lines, he said. “Hundreds of clergy are participating in that.”

 The overarching goal of the New Moral Majority’s “All Souls to the Polls” initiative is to help Americans connect the dots of faith and voter participation, Eller explained. “A food truck feeding people for free and giving out drinks and water to people standing in line communicates that people of faith can participate in democracy as a spiritual act.”



While long lines at polling sites are inspiring to see, they can cause some voters to abandon the process. Voter suppression efforts also keep some from voting. So it’s vital to make the experience as enjoyable as possible, he said.

“We want to create an uplifting atmosphere in which folks in long lines see groups of people having fun and good food and water … and listening to music. We are convinced that will help some folks to consider voting.”

The New Moral Majority is working with Baptist and other churches mainly in North Carolina because it is considered a key battleground state. But similar events also are being planned in Georgia and Pennsylvania, Eller said.

The effort stems from the organization’s wider mission to recapture the Christian faith coopted by conservative political and religious movements, he said. The network was founded in the spring, its publicity says, “to utilize this moment to change the moral narrative and try to reclaim Christian identity from the former Moral Majority, which was never moral and never a majority.”

“All Souls to the Polls,” Eller added, is designed to provide people of faith an opportunity to impact that discussion and “to be a public and moral witness in the world.”

Faith is the central motivation for Providence Baptist Church members who already have driven hundreds of people to voting stations and will continue doing so until polls close the night of Nov. 3, Aaron said. “Our faith teaches us that the church can never be closed off in the building.”

On Oct. 31, the last day of early voting in North Carolina, Providence will have a food truck stationed at a housing development from which its volunteers will transport voters to and from the polls.


Ryan M. Eller

“People of faith can participate in democracy as a spiritual act.”

Many of these residents have no other way to get there, he explained. “Some could take the bus but standing in line for three hours then catching a bus for three hours can become a deterrent.”

These and many others live in what Aaron called “opportunity deserts where there is not enough food, not enough transportation and not enough education.”

Taking these citizens to vote, therefore, is a way of living out the gospel, he believes. “We are forced to go out and assist those who are left behind. In this case, picking them up and taking them to the polls is acknowledging their condition.”

The process has been a success so far because many who would not have voted have — and will — cast ballots to create the improvements needed in their lives and communities.

“You can hear Dr. King in that wonderful speech in which he said give us the ballot and we’ll put people in leadership that have, as he said, ‘felt not only the tang of the human, but the glow of the divine.’”

Friday 30 October 2020

Moody Bible Institute promises investigation of abuse complaints


Students outside Moody Bible Institute


The review follows a student petition that claimed the Chicago school mishandled reports of sexual misconduct, abuse, and stalking

Moody Bible Institute in Chicago has promised a third-party investigation and other steps in response to a petition claiming the school mishandled complaints of sexual assault, harassment, and abuse for decades.

The petition, launched Oct. 16 on Change.org, has more than 3,100 signatures and several comments from MBI students and alumni. They claim that after they reported abuse or harassment, school leaders did not inform them of their rights, discouraged them from filing Title IX claims, or disciplined them. Title IX, a civil rights law, requires schools to investigate and respond to sexual misconduct.

Most of the petition complaints concern Timothy Arens, dean of students and Title IX decision-maker, and Rachel Puente, assistant dean of student life and part-time Title IX coordinator. School administrators said in a press release they have removed both employees from their disciplinary and Title IX roles. However, they continue to work at MBI. A school representative declined to discuss the student petition or comment further.

Arens has worked at MBI since 1984 and plans to retire next year. School President Mark Jobe and Provost Dwight Perry stressed during a chapel service on Oct. 20 that the school has not determined whether Arens or Puente did anything wrong.

“I would encourage you to abstain from judgment or conclusions,” Jobe said. “I’ve always known [Arens] to be a man of character.”

Anna Heyward, 2017 MBI alumna, wrote in an account accompanying the petition that in 2016 her then-boyfriend, an MBI graduate student and employee, coerced her into getting drunk and forced her to perform oral sex. He later raped her and hit her in the face, she said.

Heyward said that when she told Arens, he asked her what she had done to deserve being hit and told her if she repeated her story publicly she might not be allowed to graduate. She said Arens placed her on academic probation for violating student conduct rules against drinking and sex.

MBI’s Title IX policy says the school will not discipline students for conduct violations if they are not egregious and are disclosed as part of a good-faith report of sex-based misconduct.

Heyward said she lost a scholarship because of the academic probation. She claimed Arens forbade her from dating until she graduated and required her to email him regular updates about her behavior. Heyward said she also told Puente about being hit, and that Puente expressed sympathy but did not inform her of her rights to a Title IX investigation and university protection.

“To this day I don’t even know how a Title IX case is filed because I was never told the process,” Heyward told me.

Heyward began organizing the petition this summer after she mentioned her experience in a social media post and received comments and messages from students and alumni with similar stories. The petition includes 11 accounts in an accompanying online document. The dates of the incidents described in the accounts range from 1995 to 2019.


“I don’t think that Rachel Puente or Dean Arens are evil people,” Heyward said. “I think Dean Arens probably has done a lot of good things. Has he done good things in this part of his employment? I don’t think so.”


According to former students, Arens in yearly speeches invited female MBI students to view him as a father figure at school. Bethany Timm, an MBI student from 2014 to 2016, wrote that after a male student began stalking her on campus, she reported the matter to Arens. She said he did not inform her of her right to file a Title IX report and dismissed her safety concerns. Megan Wohlers, a 2019 graduate, wrote that Arens and the Title IX office directed her to sign a nondisclosure agreement and drop charges of sexual assault, stalking, and sexual harassment in exchange for the accused student agreeing to leave campus.

Attorney Adele Kimmel, director of Public Justice’s Students’ Civil Rights Project, said that if the stories are accurate, the school is “doing everything wrong.”

“If those things are true, then Dean Arens has no business handling student complaints,” Kimmel said. “It’s clear that if these allegations are true, that he approaches these in a biased way, based on sex stereotypes, and it’s hard to imagine any training that would rehabilitate him sufficiently to handle this.”

Kimmel said Title IX process violations like the ones reported in the petition are more common at small schools with insufficient Title IX training and only part-time coordinators. MBI’s policy requires Title IX personnel to receive 8-10 hours of training each year in addition to the trauma-informed response training the school provides yearly to all employees.

The petition asks MBI to include student and alumni voices in replacing Arens, to replace Puente and let students and alumni help choose a successor, to remove Title IX decision-makers with disciplinary powers, and to publish annually the number of Title IX complaints made and MBI’s response to them.

Heyward said she and eight others met on Oct. 22 with MBI leaders, including Jobe and Perry, who told them the petition demands were realistic. The school had previously announced it would allow students to give input in replacing Arens after his retirement, and Heyward said the leaders agreed during their meeting to include alumni as well.

The school said in a press release it was searching for an appropriate third-party firm to investigate the complaints in the petition, evaluate the school’s handling of the complaints, and review its Title IX practices. It also promised to integrate counseling into its Title IX processes and provide regular updates. Heyward said MBI has taken helpful first steps.

“My goal isn’t to burn [MBI] down,” Heyward said. “My goal is to make it a safer environment for future students.”

Wednesday 7 October 2020

Increase security funding for religious institutions. Jewish groups call on Congress

An interfaith coalition calls for quadrupling the annual allocation for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program to $360 million for 2021.

The U.S. Capitol building. Credit: Martin Falbisoner via Wikimedia Commons.

Three Jewish organizations joined almost a dozen faith groups calling on Congress to increase security funding for religious institutions.

The Orthodox Union, the Jewish Federations of North America, and Agudath Israel of America joined eight other faith organizations to call on Congress to dramatically increase funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP) so that synagogues, churches, mosques, and other houses of worship, as well as religious schools and other at-risk nonprofit entities, can bolster building security against the threat of attacks. 

In its letter to congressional leaders, the interfaith coalition called for quadrupling the annual allocation for the NSGP to $360 million for the fiscal year 2021 so that more institutions can be covered under the program.

The groups claimed that the program’s $90 million allocations for the past year left the majority of applicants empty-handed.

The NSGP provides grants of up to $100,000 each to nonprofits at risk of terrorist attacks so they may improve building security by acquiring and installing items ranging from fences, lighting, and video surveillance to metal detectors and blast-resistant doors, locks, and windows. Funding may also be used to train staff and pay for contracted security personnel.

Such monies have become critical for the Jewish community in the aftermath of the October 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Synagogue in Pittsburgh, where 11 Jewish worshippers were killed; six months later, the April 27, 2019 shooting at Chabad of Poway in Southern California, where one woman was killed and three others injured; in addition to a string of anti-Semitic attacks last year in New York and New Jersey.

Tuesday 6 October 2020

Christian Leaders respond to President Trump’s contracting COVID-19

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump


WASHINGTON
– Christians around the country and the world have called for prayer in light of the news that President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have tested positive for COVID-19.

We've received comments from a number of prominent Christian leaders regarding the development. Those comments are below:

“Jeana and I are highly concerned and deeply prayerful for President Trump and the First Lady. This is a very serious time for our nation and this news should serve as a wake-up call for all Americans to come together and pray for them. He is the President of the United States. I want to ask all of our churches and all of the churches across our nation to pray now, and on this coming Sunday together for President Trump, the First Lady, and all of their family to be healed from this virus and protected in every way.” – Ronnie Floyd, president, and CEO of the SBC Executive Committee

“I am saddened and concerned to hear that President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have contracted the COVID-19 virus. Clearly, this is a time for all Americans to pray for the health and recovery of our President and his wife and to pray for all Americans and others around the world who are threatened by this virus. If COVID-19 can get into the White House, it can get into any house. This is sobering news. I will be praying for the health and strength of our President and his family.” – R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“This is a time for healing. For our nation and our nation’s leader President Trump and our First Lady Melania. I know the president is always very grateful for the prayers of God’s people and especially now in view of this illness. I am confident he will recover quickly and continue to lead our nation well. May God bless our country and heal our land.” – Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas

“Let’s all take a moment to pray for the President and First Lady this morning – for protection and a speedy recovery. This is a frightening time for our country, for the First Family, and many others grappling with this virus across the country. As Christians, moments like this should prompt us to pray for God’s intervention in this time of the global pandemic.” – Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

“My prayers are with the President and First Lady this morning. As Christians, we always pray for those in authority, but here, we can pray with specificity that God would heal from this frightening virus and protect those around them from it as well. I’m praying also for the doctors treating the First Family and the medical professionals battling this virus around the world – both those treating it and those trying to bring it to a swift end. May God give us mercy in this perilous time,” – Daniel Patterson, executive vice president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission


Social media reactions

Many leaders expressed their thoughts for the President and first lady via Twitter. Some of those remarks are below:

“Please join me in praying for the speedy and full recovery of our President and First Lady.”J.D. Greear, Southern Baptist Convention president and pastor of The Summit Church

“Praying for our president and his wife for their health and healing during this time.”Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Dear God, please touch @POTUS & @FLOTUS with your healing grace, guiding the hands of all of the medical professionals treating them. Give them a speedy recovery. I thank You that You made them so strong. God, do the same for every person in the world facing the same. Amen.” – Prayer by Rev. Johnnie Moore, retweeted by GuideStone Financial Resources President O.S. Hawkins

“Let’s commit to pray for a speedy recovery for our president and first lady, and for protection for those serving them.”Jason Allen, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Early this morning, President @realDonaldTrump and First Lady @MelaniaTrump announced that, like many other Americans, they have tested positive for the coronavirus. Please join me in praying especially for them, that they would have a quick recovery.”Franklin Graham, evangelist, and president of Samaritan’s Purse

Monday 5 October 2020

American Family Association Prays for President and First Lady as They Battle COVID-19

US President, Donald J. Trump and first lady Melania Trump


As our nation continues to absorb the shock waves that President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump both have tested positive for the coronavirus, the American Family Association (AFA, afa.net) shares its deepest prayers and very best wishes for the first couple’s quick recovery.

The year of 2020 has already been one of enormous challenge for our country, yet the organization—which advocates from a biblical worldview for the constitutional rights of parents and children—knows that God will see the nation through its many trials.

Says AFA Vice President Ed Vitagliano, “Our prayers are with the president and first lady. We are asking God to protect them from the more serious symptoms of COVID-19 and for healing.”

Vitagliano adds, “AFA would like to remind Christians that we are commanded by Scripture to pray for all of our political leaders (1 Timothy 2:1-4)—and not just the ones we agree with. The church is especially told to pray for the salvation of those who do not believe in the Lord Jesus. We need to take this responsibility seriously.”

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said today that the president was showing mild symptoms of the virus. The first lady also said on Twitter that she was experiencing mild symptoms but is “overall feeling good.” Both are in quarantine. President Trump is planning to continue handling his duties as commander-in-chief and will do so at home—at the White House—for two weeks as doctors watch over him.

The news first broke after midnight this past Thursday night, when the president shared in a tweet,

“Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!”

Leaders from around the world, as well as Americans of all walks of life, have been sharing on social media their sincere wishes for the first couple’s good health and speedy recovery. President Trump, 74, becomes the most prominent of global leaders to have contracted the virus. But as the president himself has told the American people for months, the vast majority of those who contract COVID-19 recover completely.

For more than 40 years, AFA has operated within the mission to inform, equip, and activate individuals to strengthen the moral foundations of American culture and give aid to the church here and abroad in its task of fulfilling the Great Commission. Visit AFA Action Alerts

Trump's COVID-19 was made up to gain sympathy, avoid next Biden debate says Palestinian Authority


Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas 

"I’m certain that if [Joe] Biden or any other president rises ‎‎[to power], the first thing that person will do is to declare that the [Trump’s] ‎deal of the century is off the table."

In the official daily newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, Al-Hayat al-Jadida, Mahmoud Abbas ran on Sunday a front-page editorial with the headline “Trump's ‎corona - false claims and expectations,” claiming that the US President Donald Trump may have "fabricated" his coronavirus infection "to win sympathy, and to avoid ‎future debates with his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden."

The fact that Trump’s infection was announced shortly after his debate with ‎Biden “which Trump turned into the worst debate in history” makes it logical that Trump ‎wants to avoid future debates by feigning illness, said the PA newspaper.‎

Palestinian Media Watch published the translation of the piece and shared it with the Israeli press. 

The editorial added that if Trump happens to actually be sick, his illness "will cause ‎[him] to re-examine the erroneous and aggressive policies towards humanity... while he fuels racist extremist ideas, and sides with ‎falsehood against the truth, and with occupation against liberation and freedom."

The irony, PMW points out in its release, is that the PA daily also published on the same page a note coming from Saeb Erekat, the ‎Secretary of the PLO Executive Committee, who told CNN that "President ‎Mahmoud Abbas wishes US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania a speedy ‎and full recovery‏.‏‎”‎

While this editorial was more than insulting and outrageous towards the US President, PMW states, it ended in a more appealing way, saying that "whether or not the US president has caught coronavirus, [the PA] will not ‎analyze this news based on wishful thinking," where the quote “wishful thinking” might be a possible reference to the open hopes of the PA for a Biden election victory that will ‎completely change US policy and end the US peace proposal. 

This was position has been expressed earlier by Erekat 

A position that was made very clear earlier by Erekat, when he said: "I’m certain that if [Joe] Biden or any other president rises ‎‎[to power], the first thing that person will do is to declare that the [Trump’s] ‎deal of the century is off the table because they have issued statements."

Thursday 24 September 2020

Historically Black college welcomes white pastor with passion for racial justice

When Chris Caldwell thinks about student housing and food services, his pondering goes deeper than the mere campus amenities that concern administrators at most colleges.

“We have many students who are insecure in terms of their housing, and we have significant problems with food insecurity,” said Caldwell, vice president for academic affairs at Simmons College of Kentucky. At Simmons, a historically Black institution in Louisville, it is not uncommon to hear of students sleeping in their cars, he noted. “We try to do everything we can to try to help with those situations.”

Some students are single parents, so the housing situation for them is even more complex. Since Simmons has limited college-owned housing, it looks to various community resources to aid students in their search for a decent place to live.

Like most schools, Simmons stresses the importance of class attendance. Yet its leaders know students can be present but too hungry to pay attention. “We work hard at feeding our students during the day so they can focus on class,” Caldwell said.

While not all Simmons’ students come from dire circumstances, most come from impoverished backgrounds they are seeking to transcend. This is a key part of Simmons’ mission, and its leaders believe Historically Black Colleges and Universities, like Simmons, are uniquely positioned to empower all segments of the African American community.


From a tall-steeple white church to Simmons

Caldwell, who is white, came to Simmons as a part-time professor in 2015 and moved to full-time status in 2017. He had been pastor of Louisville’s Broadway Baptist Church, a congregation situated in an affluent neighborhood eight miles across town from Simmons. He assumed his vice-presidential role in 2018.

An academic vocation was not a novel idea for Caldwell. As he finished his doctorate in New Testament at Baylor University in 1997, he was considering a career in either the classroom or the pastorate. An address by former President Jimmy Carter at Baylor helped him choose parish ministry. “He talked about his post-presidential period and how he had been guided by a pretty simple concept,” Caldwell said. “He went where he was needed.

“I thought about that and prayed about that and at that point, there were a hundred people lined up for every job in the academic world,” he recalled. He sensed he could make a larger contribution by serving moderate Baptist congregations that were “seeking to navigate the waters of those times.”

It was an era when many moderate congregations had either recently left or loosened their ties to the Southern Baptist Convention because of its far rightward shift. Caldwell has no regrets serving in congregational ministry and would “absolutely do it all over again.”


Racial justice observed as a child

However, when he decided to follow his calling to Simmons, it was a step in a long journey of interest in racial justice that began when he was a child in the 1970s. Growing up in a northern suburb of Nashville, he frequently heard racist epithets and lived on a street where a cross was burned on the lawn of an African American family. He did not forget the anguish he felt, and it helped spur him to engage in interracial work as a pastor.

His energies became more focused in 2015 when pastors from predominantly white East Louisville started meeting weekly with pastors from predominantly Black West Louisville. The group, known as Empower West, “put some wheels on the vehicle when it came to the passion I had,” he explained.

“It gave me an opportunity to learn a lot,” he continued. “I had given thought to a lot of those issues but basically from a white perspective.” He and other white pastors began reading books written by Black intellectuals and learning more about the structural injustices encountered by Black people, such as the wide wealth gap that separates white and Black Americans. They began sharing their knowledge with their church members and inviting them to greater interracial involvement.

Through Empower West, Caldwell learned more about Simmons College, an institution founded in 1879 by former slaves. While it eventually became a comprehensive university, it ran into financial difficulties during the Great Depression and sold its property to the University of Louisville. The campus became the home of Louisville Municipal College, the arm of the university that served Black students during the days of segregation. Simmons continued to hold classes on the campus but limited its course offerings to theological studies. After U of L integrated in the 1950s, Simmons moved to a new location and became known as Simmons Bible College.


Season of growth at Simmons

Kevin Cosby, senior pastor of St. Stephen Baptist Church in Louisville, was elected president of the school in 2005 and began to greatly expand the curriculum. Simmons now offers bachelor’s degrees in business entrepreneurship, cross-cultural communication, music, sociology, and religious studies. It also reacquired and moved to the property it had sold to U of L. Under Cosby’s leadership, Simmons gained accreditation by the Association of Biblical Higher Education and recognition from the U.S. Department of Education as the nation’s 107th Historically Black College and University.

Asked why HBCUs remain important, Caldwell said they provide students “ethnic armor,” a term he said Cosby often uses. “We pass along the skills for students to be successful and thrive in the dominant white culture, but we also pass along the intellectual and academic traditions of the African American community,” he said.

Simmons students live in a city where feelings of anger and alienation now permeate the African American population due in part to the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, on March 13. For months, protesters have taken to the streets demanding the officers involved be charged.

The city’s housing patterns have helped inflame racial tensions, Caldwell said. “Louisville is a very segregated city. It is one of the most segregated cities in the United States, but it is not an outlier by any stretch.”

While much racial justice work needs to be done in Louisville a
nd elsewhere, Caldwell sees Simmons as an example of empowerment that can help society move toward racial equity.

Motivating students to be “agents of change” is a priority at Simmons, Caldwell said. “We are trying to help students make their life situations better, but also to remember they have a calling to reach back and bring others along.”

While some Simmons students are “academic rock stars,” most come to Simmons “woefully underprepared,” he said. Yet he emphasizes when a student demonstrates potential Simmons is determined to help them achieve. “We don’t lower the bar,” he said. “We show them where the bar is and help them get there.”

Colleges and universities typically gain prestige by touting the sterling academic credentials of the students they attract. Yet Caldwell measures academic quality by a different standard.

“The measure of excellence of a school is not what kind of students you attract but how far the student travels in four years under your tutelage,” he declared. “And by that measure, you can make a case that Simmons is the best college in the state.”

Thursday 17 September 2020

Corona Visas for Evangelical Volunteers Leave Catholics Frustrated

Courtesy: HaYovel

But Israel Today confirmed there is no conspiracy to favor Evangelicals over Catholics or Orthodox

Waves have been made in the Israeli media over an Evangelical Christian group managing to secure visas for its foreign volunteers at a time when the country’s borders are closed to non-citizens.

HaYovel is a US-based ministry (though the core staff resides in Israel much of the year) whose primary mission is aiding Israeli farmers in Judea and Samaria (the so-called “West Bank”) during the annual grape and olive harvest seasons. While here, the group’s volunteers are also educated and equipped to become ambassadors for what God is doing in Israel today.

Needless to say, the coronavirus policies that have shut Israel off to all but returning Israeli citizens were a devastating blow to HaYovel’s vision and mission. Or at least, they would have been. Instead, the closure produced what could be seen as a tremendous testimony.

“We were worried about having to shut down the operation since we only had eight of our staff members in the Land. Normally for a harvest season, we get 300 volunteers coming through in addition to staff,” HaYovel’s Executive Director, Zac Waller, told Israel Today. “So we talked to the vineyard owners to figure out a solution, and at one point even considered bringing in a mechanical harvester to complete the mission. We also reached out to our contacts in government, and finally started to see miracle after miracle. In the end, we were able to get 50 volunteers here.”

The use of the word “miracle” here is not an exaggeration. As noted, Israel has closed its borders to all non-citizens. The obvious victim of this policy has been the tourism industry. But no less impacted have been Israel’s small farmers, many of whom rely on foreign volunteers and laborers to tend and bring in seasonal crops. In the best of times, Israel’s government pays inadequate attention to these farmers. So for HaYovel’s petition to get before the right eyes, let alone be considered and approved, is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle.

Even with a Divine hand opening doors, everyone assumed to be shut and locked, this is still Israel. The bureaucracy is thick, and the feet are often dragged. And though the approval for HaYovel’s volunteers came in what many would consider record time for a visa matter, the mandatory quarantine for all incoming passengers still meant they wouldn’t quite get to the vines in time. But then another miracle occurred – the grapes waited for the volunteers.

“We always base the timing of the harvest on the biblical feasts,” explained Waller. “And every year we hit it spot on, but this year the grapes just weren’t ready. They were about three weeks later than normal. But it just so happened that the first day of the red grape harvest was the first day that our volunteers got out of their mandatory two-week quarantine after arriving in the Land. Thank God, it’s just all coming together.”

In addition to being the fulfillment of prophecy (see Isaiah 61:5), the work of HaYovel’s volunteers is crucial to the success of small farmers in the biblical heartland.

“We need volunteers, too!”

HaYovel’s incredible story did not go unnoticed. Sadly, the only bit that the secular Israeli media focused on was how these Christians had somehow sidestepped restrictions under which others have been left groaning.

And that caught the attention of other Christian institutions that likewise run volunteer programs, and who felt that in light of HaYovel’s success, they were being unfairly denied visas by Israel’s Interior Ministry.

“We need visas, too!” read the headline of a letter sent to the Israeli government by The Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land.

The Catholic officials said they were “astonished” to learn that American Evangelical volunteers had secured visas, while they have been unable to do the same for volunteers that normally serve at hospitals, schools, and elderly homes that are administered by the Catholic Church.

“We have been repeatedly told that visas cannot be given because of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Catholics complained, seeming to suggest that the Israeli government was giving preferential treatment to more pro-Israel Christians.

Waller proposed a simpler answer.

“Agriculture is kind of a special category,” he noted. “Even in times of lockdown, agriculture has got to continue so that the stores can stay stocked. In addition to that, we are living and working in rural areas, aren’t doing tours, we aren’t around a lot of people or going into populated areas. Our risk of exposing or being exposed is minimal.”

Israel Today can indeed confirm that there is no special consideration being granted to Israel-supporting Evangelical ministries in regard to volunteer visas. Many of the Evangelical ministries based in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have had to operate during this period with greatly reduced staff numbers due to the blanket ban on entry visas.



Friday 28 August 2020

‘Angel mom’ dropped from RNC lineup after promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy

Mary Ann Mendoza was scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention Tuesday night.