13 killed in Christian-Muslim clashes in Egypt

According to Egypt’s state-run television station, 13 people lost their lives in a Christian-Muslim conflict in Cairo on Wednesday, while another 90 were injured.

The conflict began when hundreds of Christians protested the burning of a church in a village outside of Cairo by Muslims. The Muslims in this village had burnt the church down after they discovered a local Christian man had been involved in a romance with a Muslim woman.

The Christian protestors were met by thousands of Muslims who reportedly threw stones at them, and then began firing on them. The army then arrived and allegedly also fired upon the Christians. Homes and local businesses were also torched.

Attorney Wagih Anwar Abou Saad, who was an eye witness of the conflict, informed the Free Coptic Voice that, “the army is protecting the Muslims, who sought shelter behind the army tanks.”

A representative of the Coptic Church, Father Abdelmaseeh Baseet also claimed in an interview with the CNN that only Christians were killed in the clash. Of the property destroyed, only Coptic owned factories were torched.

The Egyptian military, who now control the country after the successful ousting of former President Hosni Mubarak, promised to find out who is behind “the acts of violence” and to hold them liable “to the full extent of the law.”

Germans to include the internet in their fasting this Lent

In a study done in Germany it seems that greater numbers of Germans will be fasting from something this Lent, as more Lutherans are adopting the practice and as the ‘millenial’ generation of environmentalist young adults take a stand against materialism and greed.

The study found that 60% of those Germans polled were convinced that spending a few weeks without the normal pleasures that tended to obsessiveness was good for them.

Of those who favoured fasting, 78% indicated they would stop drinking alcohol, 69% said they would stop eating sweets, while interestingly enough, 28% confirmed they would stop all internet and computer use during Lent.

BBC’s new Bible series will be presented by an atheist

The BBC has chosen an atheist Hebrew scholar, Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou, as the presenter of its new series on the Bible, according to a report by The Telegraph.

Stavrakopoulou works as a senior lecturer in the Hebrew Bible at the University of Exeter.

In a series entitled ‘The Bible’s Buried Secrets,’ Stavrakopoulou will guide viewers through some of the latest archaeological discoveries in the Middle East and assess how these may impact the world's understanding of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Just some of the topics to be explored during the series include the origins of the story of the Garden of Eden and the historical context of King David and his kingdom.

Interestingly enough, Dr Stavrakopoulou is set to make a number of bold scholarly assertions during the series, including about Eve.

“Eve, particularly in the Christian tradition, has been very unfairly maligned as the troublesome wife who brought about the Fall,” says Stavrakopoulou.

“Don’t forget that the biblical writers are male and it’s a very male-dominated world. Women were second-class citizens, seen as property.”

During an interview with the Radio Times, Dr Stavrakopoulou said she did not think it was a problem her being an atheist becauseas an academic “you leave your faith at the door”.

“I’m aware that there are some who find it hard to understand why an atheist could possibly be interested in the Bible, and I think that does a massive disservice to a fantastic collection of ancient texts.

“The Bible is a work of religious and social literature that has a huge impact on Western culture, and for that reason it’s important that programmes like these are made.”

The director of the Church and Media Network, Andrew Graystone, agrees with Stavrakopoulou that it should not be a problem having an atheist leading a series on the Bible.

“Within the broader mix of programmes on the BBC, the personal convictions of the presenters don’t matter so much. What matters is whether or not they are an expert in the subject of the programme and are a good presenter,” he argued.

“Impartiality is always important but we can’t expect presenters to be completely impartial. Jeremy Clarkson isn’t impartial about cars, Gary Lineker isn’t impartial about football. What matters is that the presenters are intelligent and sensible and that the viewers are equally intelligent and sensible.”

Graystone also did not agree with the argument currently being employed by many Christians that Dr Stavrakopoulou’s appointment is yet another sign that the BBC is unfair in its handling of the Christian faith.

“Some headlines have described Dr Stavrakopoulou as the BBC’s ‘new face of religion’ and I think that’s over rigging it a bit because the BBC has many faces of religion. It doesn’t have a single face of religion,” he said.

“It’s hard to make the case that the BBC is being unfair to Christians when they just had a four-part prime time series on Jesus at Christmas and Radio 4 dedicated a whole day to reading the King James Bible.”

“We haven’t seen it yet so let’s see what it’s actually like. It might be great, it might be terrible but if it’s terrible it won’t be terrible because it wasn’t presented by a Christian.”

Human trafficking on the increase in post-quake Haiti

Haiti is still desperately trying to recover from the earthquake that shattered it at the beginning of last year. Sadly, and despite the best efforts of many Haitians and numerous aid agencies, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund recently released a disturbing report that illustrated in many situations Haiti’s problems are worsening, not improving.

This is particularly evident in the area of child trafficking, where experts say there has been a drastic increase since the quake. This is because parents are left desperate as they face the reality of their inability to feed, clothe or educate their children, and are then taken advantage of by traffickers who promise a better life for their children.

Unfortunately, the children are used for prostitution, or as UNICEF's report disturbingly indicates the trafficked children are also being used to supply an illegal adoption market.

Ron Sparks who works with the Baptist Haiti Mission explains, "The tragedy is only magnified because of the earthquake and so many more children being on the street and being vulnerable to predators."

Sparks explains that trafficking can be cut down if aid agencies can "continue providing a support group for the families and the children themselves” and also provide accountability measures so that children will be recorded and checked up on preventing them from simply disappearing. Aid agencies also provide a place "that people know they have a place to turn to when they are desperate, and they can get help."

Archbishop of Canterbury hails Bhatti as 'a martyr'

In an impassioned appeal, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, called upon the Pakistan Government to do more to protect its minorities even as he lauded the assassinated Pakistan Minorities Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti as a "martyr."

Bhatti was killed by gunmen in Islamabad on Wednesday due to his opposition of the controversial blasphemy law, and his championing of the case of Aasia Bibi, a Pakastani Christian woman condemned to death for allegedly falling foul of this blasphemy law. Bhatti was the only Christian minister in the Pakistan cabinet and his work resulted in numerous death threats made upon him. The Pakistan Taliban later took credit for his murder.

Writing for the London's Times, the Archbishop said that Pakistan was being blackmailed and bullied by religious extremists, and that those who supported Bhatti’s killing "inhabit a world of fantasy, shot through with paranoid anxiety.”

The Archbishop went on to say that there was a faction in Pakistan, which was "wholly uninterested in justice and due process of law, concerned only with promoting an inhuman pseudo-religious tyranny."

Dr. Williams urged for Pakistan to genuinely debate the blasphemy law, because "part of the problem is the weakening of properly traditional Islam by the populist illiteracies of modern extremism."

Bhatti died "for all practical purposes as a martyr," said Dr Williams in his conciliatory conclusion, "Not simply for his Christian faith, but for a vision shared between Pakistani Christians and Muslims."

C.S. Lewis' popularity grows by the year

C.S. Lewis would be more surprised than anyone if he knew how popular his writings would remain almost 50 years past his death. Lewis once remarked to a friend that he doubted anyone would bother to read him once he had passed on. So not only would Lewis be amazed to find that three of his seven book children’s series “Chronicles of Narnia” had been made into movies, but he would also be dumbfounded if he knew that his books were growing more popular by the year, not less so.

According to Michael Maudlin, an executive editor at HarperOne, not only are the “Narnia” books are still “huge backlist sellers that dominate everything else,” but “Mere Christianity” still sells about 150,000 copies a year, as does “The Screwtape Letters," a satirical correspondence between an uncle demon to his nephew demon about the ways and means of leading people astray.

The popularity of “The Screwtape Letters” has resulted in a play that is currently touring the United States, while “Mere Christianity” has been credited by many famous people as being central to their conversion to Christianity, including the Watergate felon Charles Colson and the National Institutes of Health Director and ‘genome’ scientist, Dr. Francis Collins. Lewis’ long-term impact as a noted academic has also been seen in a tertiary college of study recently being founded in his honour.

“I would say in the last 10 years, C. S. Lewis has sold more books than any other 10-year span since he started publishing,” Maudlin said. “He’s not only not declining, he is in his sweet spot.”

This popularity has certainly gained the attention of HarperOne, who recently released the “C.S. Lewis Bible” - a Bible annotated with various Lewis quotations from his books and letters. For example, in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus challenges the outwardly but not sincerely religious, there is added a quote from “Mere Christianity”:

“How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious?” They are “worshiping an imaginary God.”

Maudlin, who himself says he became a Christian through the influence of Lewis’ writings, admitted the author would probably have been very uncomfortable with all this attention.

“He would be uncomfortable if it were sold as a personality cult, or him as mentor or guru,” Maudlin said of Lewis, whose name looms larger than the word “Bible” on the book’s cover. “So we had to make it dignified.”

Has extraterrestial life been found?

Richard Hoover, an astrobiologist working for Nasa has claimed in an article written for the Journal of Cosmology that he has found tiny fossils of alien bugs inside meteorites that crashed into Earth.

Hoover says that filaments and other structures in the meteorites appear to be microscopic fossils of extraterrestrial beings that resemble algae known as cyanobacteria.

Laboratory tests conducted by Hoover on the rocky filaments were not able to find evidence they were linked to Earth-based organisms, because they lacked nitrogen, which is essential for life on Earth.

Hoover is convinced this indicates they are "the remains of extraterrestrial life forms that grew on the parent bodies of the meteorites when liquid water was present, long before the meteorites entered the Earth's atmosphere."

Hoover made the discovery after studying the freshly cleaved surfaces of three ancient meteorites that are thought to be the oldest in our solar system.

Interestingly enough, Hoover has made similar claims before in studies he has made on other meteorites, but nothing has been confirmed yet.

Rudy Schild, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics and editor of the journal Hoover made his claims in, said: "The implications are that life is everywhere, and that life on Earth may have come from other planets."

Schild has also instigated a process where 100 other scientists would study and comment on Hoover’s findings, thus thoroughly vetting them.