Pray as you Go: Will Mobile Phones Change Religion?

A recent article in Livescience.com recently asked the question whether mobile devices will enhance or detract religious practice. Advances in technology have almost always been readily embraced by religions: from the printing press to radio to TV to the internet. However, the incredible proliferation of mobile handsets is leading experts to query whether they will be a greater help or hindrance to religious practice.

Cell phones are so pervasive that they have incredible potential to strengthen communities, especially in areas and situations where they are the only digital option available. Already, hundreds of apps exist that assist Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists in their various spiritual journeys. Apps even exist that seek to empower Atheists in religious discussions.

However, some religious leaders believe that mobile phones will isolate people from true community in the sense of face to face relationships.

Others disagree with such notions. Instead, leaders such as James Clement van Pelt, program coordinator of Yale University’s initiative in religion, science and technology, see the broad appeal of mobile devices is their ability to unite religious communities beyond even barriers such as geography.

Darleen Pryds, an associate professor of Christian spirituality and medieval history at Franciscan School of Theology agrees with this.

“Even if I haven't participated in real time with the prayer service, the series of prayers are there in my newsfeed as a reminder. When I do pray in real time with them, I have a sense of a large, international community praying together. It's pretty powerful,” she said.

However, the overall sense is that we are in the early days of making the best use possible of mobile devices in a way that will connect people and enhance the overall sense of worship. Dudley Rose, the associate dean for ministry studies at Harvard University’s Divinity School, gives a balanced view in this regard.

“The future is very bright, but we have yet to get our mind around a world where some [people get] their whole religious experience through a device. The challenge then, is how to make wise use of the technology, while at the same time be wary of its potential to be destructive to community and a sense of submission to one's faith.”

(To read the full article, please go to http://livescience.com).

Violent Drug Gang Have Christian Author as ‘Required Reading’

John Eldredge, the author of a million plus bestseller, “Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul,” has been cited as spiritual inspiration for a ruthless fundamentalist Mexican drug gang called La Familia.

The leader of the gang, which controls most of the Crystal Meth traffic in the US is Nazario Morena who has just written a 104 page booklet called “Thoughts” that gives Christian inspirational advice. Morena also expects his gang members to study the Bible and pray the Rosary even as they gun down police, dismember opponents and manufacture drugs. La Familia hit the headlines in 2006 when they threw severed heads into a Mexican disco, and they have become infamous for brutality mixed with pseudo-spirituality.

Morena has made John Eldredge’s book required reading for his gang members because he so appreciates Eldredge’s tendency to encourage Christian men to rediscover their masculinity in toughness and violence.

So what exactly is it about "Wild at Heart" that Morena loves? Well, for a start, Eldredge writes approvingly of men’s innate love of weapons, combat and hunting.

“Aggression is part of the masculine design; we are hardwired for it. If we believe that man is made in the image of God, then we would do well to remember that “the Lord is a warrior (Exodus 15:3).”

When the macho passages in Wild at Heart are read in context, it’s apparent that Eldredge’s animosity is toward what he sees as society’s emasculation of the male. His remedy is physical adventures in nature and an embracing of the Bible. He writes elsewhere that:

“Capes and swords, camouflage, bandannas and six shooters–these are the uniforms of boyhood. Little boys yearn to know that they are powerful, they are dangerous, they are something to be reckoned with. How many parents have tried to prevent little Timmy from playing with guns? Give it up. If you do not supply a boy with weapons, he will make them from whatever materials are at hand. My boys chew their graham crackers into the shape of handguns at the breakfast table.”

Over the course of his book, Eldredge tries to convince his readers that it is natural, or “in the blood” of men to yearn for violence. He says that, “Women didn’t make Braveheart one of the best selling films of the decade. Flying Tigers, The Bridge Over The River Kwai, The Magnificent Seven, Shane, High Noon, Saving Private Ryan, Top Gun, The Die Hard films, Gladiator–the movies a man loves reveal what his heart yearns for, what is set inside him from the day of his birth. Like it or not, there is something fierce in the heart of every man.”

However, abundant psychological research has proven that humans (both sexes) have an instinctive aversion to killing others. Most soldiers, other than the estimated two percent who are sociopaths, have to go through specific conditioning before they are able to fire weapons at others. For example in World War Two (prior to the development of such conditioning) according to one study only 15-20% of U.S. riflemen fired their rifles in combat.

Eldredge has distanced himself from La Familia claiming that they have fundamentally misunderstood his message.

(To read the full article, please go to http://blogs.alternet.org).

Bible will be Translated into Every Spoken Language by 2025

Within the next 15 years every spoken language in the world will have the Bible translated into its own tongue. This is because of new technological advances as well as translation strategies.

The world’s largest Scripture translation organization, the Wycliffe Bible Translators, believes that the Bible will be translated into all of the remaining 2,200 languages used by some 350 million people by 2025. There are about 6,905 languages spoken in the world.

The man who is responsible for raising the $1 billion needed for the effort, called the Last Languages Campaign, believes God will provide people and money to finally finish the more than 2,000-year effort.

“By God’s provision we went through a financial crisis and during the very same year as the financial crisis we have our greatest year ever in the number of translations started,” said Paul Edwards, executive director of Wycliffe’s Last Language Campaign, when speaking to The Christian Post recently.

“Apparently, God is less worried about the money and He is more worried about his Word getting out.”

Since its launch, the Last Languages Campaign has received a total commitment of $184 million.

Edwards said many factors are contributing to the rapid speed of Bible translation over the past few years.

New computer software allows translators to fairly accurately predict the rest of a paragraph after they enter a few phonetic words. Also a small, battery-powered satellite and a laptop enables a translator to check his translator with a master translator somewhere in the world with little effort. Both these advancements save a tremendous amount of time.

Finally, Wycliffe is also using a new approach with translation by having teams translate groups or clusters of similar languages at the same time. Many translation teams worldwide are working on five to 12 similar languages at the same time so if one language group receives a Gospel story so do the other similar language groups. This change in approach should also see Bibles being translated into new languages more quickly.

(To read this article in full, please go to http://christianpost.com).

Religious Wars Enter App Territory

The recent dramatic increase of smart-phone software has created entirely new dimensions in the common everyday religious debate sector. What do you do if you happen to be sitting in a coffee bar with a group of friends and someone challenges you with a faith question you don’t have the first clue how to answer? Well, the answer is now as far away as your cell phone! All you need to do is download an app and it will tell you how to deal with the issue at hand.

Publishers of Christian material have begun developing iPhone apps that guide the average user in quick comebacks and rhetorical strategies for believers who need the help.

“Say someone calls you narrow-minded because you think Jesus is the only way to God,” says one top-selling application introduced in March by a Christian publishing company. “Your first answer should be: ‘What do you mean by narrow-minded?’ ”
Interestingly enough, there are also a competing group of apps which arms atheists for battle.

For religious skeptics, the “BibleThumper” iPhone app boasts that it “allows the atheist to keep the most funny and irrational Bible verses right in their pocket” to be “always ready to confront fundamentalist Christians or have a little fun among friends.”

In a dozen new phone applications, whether faith-based or faith-bashing, the prospective debater is given a primer on the basic rules of engagement — how to parry the circular argument, the false dichotomy, the ad hominem attack, the straw man — and then coached on all the likely flashpoints of contention. Why Darwinism is scientifically sound, or not. The differences between intelligent design and creationism, and whether either theory has any merit.

Users can scroll from topic to topic to prepare themselves or, in the heat of a dispute, search for the point at hand — and the perfect retort.

(To read the full article, please go to http://nytimes.com).

Robert Pattinson and Religion

Teen heartthrob Robert Pattinson is keen on starting his own religion.

The Twilight star has many ambitions away from acting and he is fascinated by the idea of being the head of his own faith.

In an interview with the German edition of Glamour magazine, Pattinson said that: "I definitely want to record an album, direct a film and start my own religion."

When asked why he would be interested in starting his own religion, Pattinson mentioned that one big advantage would be the tax breaks, saying "Well, I definitely wouldn't have to pay taxes anymore."

The actor who plays a vampire named Edward in the immensely popular Twilight series also addressed claims that author Stephanie Meyer hides Mormon philosophy in her books. He said: "I think people make up all these Mormon references just so they can publish Twilight articles in respectable publications. Even Stephanie said it doesn't mean any of that. It is based on a dream."

'Machine Gun Pastor' Film in Production

Hollywood star Gerard Butler has agreed to play the role of the drug-dealing biker who turns into a gun-toting pastor that protects children in the new film “Machine Gun Preacher.”

“Machine Gun Preacher” is based on the true story of Sam Childers, and will chronicle how he transforms from a violent drug addict to a Christian pastor and missionary who involves himself in protecting Sudanese children from the rebel group Lord’s Resistance Army.

According to Variety Magazine, filming will begin in July.

Last year, Childers was interviewed by The Christian Post about his life of wielding weapons to protect orphans while he was promoting his book ‘Another Man’s War: The True Story of One Man’s Battle to Save Children in the Sudan.’

“I don’t condone violence at all,” Childers responded when questioned about his use of weapons. “I don’t believe in violence but at the same time I don’t believe that children should be raped, murdered, or cut up."

“I look of it as a self-defense and I look at it as I’m helping God’s children,” he explained. “I’m not a person out to murder. It’s not that I like hurting anybody. But at the same time these people need to be stopped.”

In his book, Childers describes how he has spent much of the last twelve years building the Angels of East Africa Children’s village and rescuing children from attacks by the LRA. He also remembers gruesome scenes after LRA raids that included smelling the burning of flesh and saving a woman drenched in her own blood from a breast that was half cut off by a machete. He said the crazed rebel group often even forced victims to engage in acts of cannibalism and children to butcher their mothers.

“I loved fighting then. And I still love fighting now. The difference is today I’m fighting for the children and families God sent me to protect,” Childers wrote in his book.

The film “Machine Gun Preacher” is expected to be released in the fall of 2011, according to Lionsgate entertainment company.

(To read the full story, please go to http://christianpost.com. Image is of Sam Childers arriving at his book launch in Beverley Hills, CA).

Archbishop Fears the Impact of the Women Bishops Debate

In addressing the British Methodist Conference in Portsmouth, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, spoke of his deep desire to see woman eventually ordained as bishops in the Church of England, but not in a way that will “violently disrupt” the everyday life of the church.

Archbishop Williams asked the Methodists to pray for the Church of England as they prepare for their own conference and the key debates on women bishops that will take place there. Williams said that:

“My hope and prayer is that we shall see women ordained as bishops in the Church of England. My hope and prayer is also that we shall do that in a way that does not violently disrupt some of the features of our common life, that we actually lose one another in a sense.

“Yes, we will have some mess afterwards but making that mess something other than rancorous and resentful is what I would like to see. I am quite prepared to be Petrine for quite a long time on that one [a reference to the leadership style of Peter who compromised on certain principles in order to preserve order and hierarchy within the church].”