‘Twittering’ the Entire Bible – 140 characters at a time!

Chris Juby, a 30 year old from Durham City, U.K., intends to condense one chapter of the Bible a day into 140 characters and send it out on his Twitter account.

Juby is the worship directory at a local church in Durham City began with Genesis chapter one on Sunday and aims to work his way through all 1,189 chapters of the Bible.

It is a giant-size task of Biblical proportions and will take Juby more than three years to complete.

His first entry on Twitter read: "God created the heavens, the earth and everything that lives. He made humankind in his image, and gave them charge over the earth."

In an interview with the The Telegraph, Juby said: "It is my normal habit to read a chapter of the Bible each morning and I always read through from Genesis to Revelation."

"As I was coming to the end last time, I thought I needed a way of focussing my mind a little bit more on what I was reading. I thought a summary would be a good way of doing this. I already use Twitter, so I thought I'd share my summaries."

Juby also said that: "I am really excited about the project. The Bible underpins so much of our culture. People like Shakespeare and Dickens made casual references to what we would now regard as obscure passages of scripture. But people - even Christians - do not tend to read the whole Bible.”

"It is perhaps regarded as a bit of an oddball thing to do. I hope in doing the summary, it will inspire people to read the Bible for themselves. My summaries are no substitute for the real thing."

If you are interested in following Juby’s efforts, you can find him on Twitter.com.

Indonesian Christians March in Protest Against Attacks on Minority Religions

On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered together in Jakarta, Indonesia to protest against attacks by radical Islamists on Christians.

The mostly Christian group were demanding that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono intervene to prevent hardline Muslims groups from attacking minority faiths. Many of the protestors carried Indonesian flags at half mast. The group accused the government of violating the constitutional rights of minority groups to freely practice their religion.

In the first six months of 2010 there were 28 cases of reported religious freedom violations, compared to only 18 reported in 2009 for the entire year.

The violations include the forced closure of churches as well as attacks such as torching.

Investigations into the IAM Medical Team’s Deaths Continues

The International Assistance Mission (IAM), the Christian aid agency whose medical team of workers were brutally killed last week in Afghanistan now suspects that the assault was "an opportunistic ambush by a group of non-local fighters," and not a robbery as previously supposed by some leading security experts.

IAM has been conducting its own research into last Thursday’s mass murder of ten of its staff who were on a trip to the impoverished villages of the Nuristan province in northeastern Afghanistan. The team was visiting the villages to provide medical care, most specifically to those suffering with eye problems.

The team had trekked about 100 miles through the Hindu Kush Mountains in their SUV vehicles. They were then forced to cross a swollen river on foot, and it was when they returned to their vehicles after concluding the visit to the villages that they were attacked. Most of the team was shot while two of the women who tried to hide in a vehicle were killed with a hand-grenade, according to the Christian Post.

The IAM leadership team is however waiting on "the outcome of the official investigation by the relevant departments of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and its partners," said IAM Executive Director Dirk R. Frans.

Ramadan is an Opportunity to Learn More about Muslims

With Muslims throughout the globe marking the start of Ramadan today, some Christian groups have urged Christians to make a concerted effort to learn more about their Muslim neighbours during Islam’s holiest month.

Mission Network News offers a 30 Days Muslim Prayer Guide to help Christians pray for and build bridges of tolerance, understanding and friendship towards fellow Muslim citizens. The guide includes practical prayer points while also providing informative background articles and resources.

“Especially in the climate of Islamic terrorism, the 30 Days Muslim Prayer Guide is an effective tool to help Christians be more prayerful and Christ-like,” commented MNN Executive Director Greg Yoder.

Ramadan is a time when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, pray and focus on giving to charity. The fast includes not only food, but also water and just about everything you might put into your mouth including gum and mints.

In an interview with Stephen Prothero of CNN.com, Zeenat Rahman, a Muslim American who serves as Director of Policy at the Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago, says that the hardest part of Ramadan is abstaining from water.

“My biggest fear is being thirsty,” Rahman says, “and the fact that you can’t drink water is really, really difficult.”

Prothero is an expert in religions, and also believes it is imperative that Christians use Ramadan to become more acquainted with and therefore more understanding of their Muslim neighbours. This is especially important in an age where there are so many misconceptions about the Islamic faith which results in many people treating Muslims with great suspicion and fear.

Christian NGO Won't Leave Afghanistan

On Monday, the International Assistance Mission (IAM), a Christian NGO whose 10 member medical team was ambushed and killed on Friday, paid tribute to their fallen aid workers and pledged to continue their work in Afghanistan.

IAM has been working in Afghanistan since 1966 and presently has a staff of fifty foreign volunteers and five hundred local Afghans operating seven different Afghan provinces.

"It's devastating for everybody,” executive director Dirk Frans of IAM said of the killings. “Still, I don't think it's actually going to stop our work. We've been here all those years, and, God willing, we'll continue.”

When confirming the names and details of the ten aid workers who were killed, the IAM statement said that:

“We want to pay tribute to each of our colleagues who died, to their commitment to serve the Afghan people. Those who have known them and seen them at work can do nothing put pay the highest tribute to them. Over the next few days and weeks, there will no doubt be many news articles about the lives of these individuals. They will speak for themselves.”

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the murders, claiming that IAM were proselytizing and spying for Western military forces. IAM categorically denies this charge, saying in a statement that:

“IAM is a Christian organization – we have never hidden this. Indeed, we are registered as such with the Afghan government. Our faith motivates and inspires us - but we do not proselytize. We abide by the laws of Afghanistan. We are signatures of the Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs Disaster Response Programmes, in other words, that, 'aid will not be used to further a particular political or religious standpoint.' But more than that, our record speaks for itself. IAM would not be invited back to villages if we were using aid as a cover for preaching. And in particular, this specific camp led by Tom Little, a man with four decades experience in Afghanistan, has led eye camps for many years to Nuristan – and was welcomed back every time.”

In other news, aid agencies are concerned that Taliban’s claiming responsibility for the killings reflects a change of emphasis signaling increased hostility towards foreign NGO’s and aid organisations.

The New York Times has reported that the killings of the Nuristan Eye Camp Expedition brought to 17 the number of aid workers killed in Afghanistan this year, with another 19 abducted, according to the Afghan NGO Safety Office.

Famed Atheist Vows He Won’t Convert While Lucid

Two months ago, Christopher Hitchens, the famed atheist and author of the controversial book ‘God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,’ was diagnosed with a form of severe cancer and immediately underwent a stringent course of chemotherapy. While he has lost most of his hair, Hitchen’s lack of faith in God remains in place.

In a recent interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Hitchens said the only time he may "hedge [his] bets" is if he is so sick that he becomes mentally unaware of what he is saying and doing. He also said that while Christians love “to spread these rumours” that he had come to faith in Christ, that he would not do "such a pathetic thing" while he is lucid.

"I could be quite sure of that," he told Cooper. And if there are any rumors saying otherwise, he firmly asserted, "Don't believe it."

Hitchens has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer, the same type of cancer that his father died of. While his father lived to be 79, Hitchens is only 61 but is a big smoker and drinker making it statistically unlikely he will defeat his cancer.

"Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long," he said.

Hitchens who has repeatedly stated that he cannot trust anything which contradicts science or outrages reason, and does not believe in an afterlife of any sort, said that he does not pray even on his most difficult days.

"That's all meaningless to me," he said. "I don't think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation or anything else."

Hitchens also expressed surprise by the number of prayer groups that have been formed on his behalf, many of which are praying that he will make peace with God. Hitchens says that he has no interest in stopping them.

"I say if it makes you feel better, then you have my blessing," he concluded, reports CNN.com.

Mourning the Medical Team Killed in Afghanistan

The group of ten medical team members who were shot dead assassination style on Thursday, were working on behalf of a Christian group, the International Assistance Mission. The Taliban, which has claimed responsibility for the act, also accused them of carrying Bibles, says CNN News.

However, Hans Ronnlund, a representative of the International Assistance Mission, denied this. He said that the organization was formed for the purposes of humanitarian development and that medical staffers did not carry Bibles.

"We cannot understand how they can say that," he said.

In other news, over 400 people gathered yesterday at the Loudonville Community Church in Loudonville, New York, to commemorate Tom Little, an optometrist who was among 10 people killed by Taliban gunmen.

"Four weeks ago, Tom Little stood right here," an visibly moved Stan Key, senior pastor, told his congregation.

"We were personally impacted... we're talking about martyrdom here," Key added.

Dr. Tom Hale, also a medical relief worker himself, told the church that Little's tragic death was not in vain. "This was not a waste," he said emphatically. "This is an enormous loss. Many of us are angry."

Hale mentioned that the villagers Little had visited had pleaded with him to go there.

Hale's voice choked with emotion as he asked for prayer for "this intense and shocking loss."

(To read these articles in full, please go to http://religion.blogs.cnn.com).