Archbishop Urges Prayer and Support for Royal Couple

Writing on his website, the Archbishop of Canterbury urged people to both pray for and support Prince William and Kate Middleton, not only as they say their wedding vows on Friday at 11am London time, but also as they prepare to take up their responsibilities as a royal couple.

“No individual exists alone,” wrote the Archbishop. “People come to their weddings with family and friends around them. And of course with this particular wedding, they’re coming with friends and supporters all around the world, watching and witnessing.

“Every wedding then, sends a message to people. It’s two people declaring something, not only about themselves, but about what they most deeply believe, the values they must deeply hold to, declaring that to the whole world around them.”

Williams added, “A marriage is good news because it says something so deep about our humanity and it tells us that we can have grounds for hope that there are still people around us who want to spend their lives with each other, who want to make this great act of generous commitment to one another and so everybody around the world watching this will have some sense of the commitments that are possible.”

Williams lauded the young couple as being “deeply unpretentious,” and said it had been an absolute please to get to know them.

“I think they have a clear sense of what they believe they’re responsible to. They’re responsible to the whole society, responsible to God for their relationship, and I think it’s impressive that they’ve had that simplicity about it – they’ve known what matters, what’s at the heart of all this.

“Naturally, I want to wish William and Catherine every richest blessing in their life together. But I want to wish them especially the courage and clarity they’ll need to live out this big commitment ... to live it out for the rest of us.”

The archbishop concluded, “I hope they’ll be given the strength and the persistence to go on showing the rest of us what’s possible, for the whole of their life together.”

Christopher Hitchens says he will affirm atheism even in the face of death

The renowned atheist, author and philosopher Christopher Hitchens affirmed to the American Atheists conference over the Easter weekend, that even though he had lost his voice to esophageal cancer, his atheistic beliefs were stronger than ever.

Hitchens wrote a letter to the conference, where he encouraged fellow unbelievers to remain united and to carry on the “secular revolution.”

“Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal; the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need),” wrote Hitchens.

The atheist, made famous by his book “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,”and by the debates he engaged in with well-known Christian leaders, honestly shared that he was in a “long argument” with the “specter of death” in which no one has ever won. Yet, Hitchens assured the conference, as the idea of death becomes more familiar, so the “pleading for salvation, redemption and supernatural deliverance” becomes “more hollow and artificial”.

Hitchens said he placed his trust in medical science and the support of friends and family rather than the “false consolations of religion.”

Hitchens is presently undergoing experimental cancer treatment for his stage 4 esophageal cancer. One of the doctors that helped design the treatment is none other than the evangelical scientist Francis Collins. Collins is a previous debating opponent of Hitchens, but now they are firm friends.

Hitchens has previously warmly praised Collins, saying they enjoy a “wonderful relationship” despite their religious differences.

Hitchens concluded the letter by encouraging his fellow atheists to continue resisting “this sinister nonsense,” and to defend and uphold the separation of church and state. Hitchens finished with the words "Don’t keep the faith.”

Global Poll reveals that a majority of people believe in God

A massive global poll has shown that 51% of people believe in God, while only 18% don’t and 17% are undecided.

The poll was conducted by the global research company, Ipsos Social Research Institute, and they questioned over 18,000 people based in 23 different countries.

The managing director of Ipsos, Bobby Duffy, informed Reuters, "It may seem to many that we live in a secular world but this survey shows just how important spiritual life is to so many global citizens with half saying they believe in a spiritual being and the same proportion in an afterlife of some sort or other.”

"The other really interesting thing is that such a large proportion of the remaining people are just not sure there is a spiritual explanation either for how they got here or what happens after they die."

South African ranks in the top percentages of countries where a majority of people ascribe to a “definitive belief in a God or Supreme Being," with 83% of South Africans confirming this as their belief, fourth on the list behind Indonesia (93%), Turkey (91%) and Brazil (84%). Those who are most likely to believe in “many Gods or Supreme Beings” live in India (24%), China (14%) and Russia (10%).

Those countries at the top of the list of those who say they don’t believe in God or a Supreme Being(s) are France (39%), Sweden (37%), Belgium (36%), Great Britain (34%), Japan (33%) and Germany (31%).

When it comes to questions of heaven and hell, the statistics roughly match those who believe in God with around half of the global population believing in a form of afterlife. However, nearly a quarter of respondents do not believe in either heaven or hell.

Other findings of interest revealed by the survey shows that 41% of people believe in human evolution, while 28% believe in creationism and 31% are unsure what to believe.

The participating countries for the survey were Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United States of America.

Have they found the ‘God Particle’?

Rumours emanating from the Large Hadron Collidor project are suggesting that the elusive so-called “God Particle” may have been found.

Unconfirmed reports from a leaked internal memo suggests that one of the detectors at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, near Geneva, might have picked up signals that could be the long sought after particle, called the Higgs boson.

The Large Hadron Collider project aims to use their massive £6 billion atom smasher to prove or disprove the existence of the Higgs boson, a theoretical particle believed to give everything in the universe mass.

The particle is an essential aspect of the model used by scientists to describe how particles and atoms are made up, and rumours that evidence of this Higgs boson had been discovered began after an internal memo was posted on the internet.

However, other scientists have been quick to disregard the claim since many candidates for the particle that appear in the collision experiments at the LHC are easily dismissed after closer examination.

Some experts even denounced the memo as a hoax, but a spokesperson for CERN, James Gillies, while admitting the memo was genuine said it was one of thousands currently being produced by the physicists and that it still needed to undergo further assessment.

Gillies said: "It is far too early to say if there is anything to it or not. There are 3,000 scientists working on ATLAS and they divide the analysis work up between them.

"This is an internal communication that highlights something interesting, but it has to go through several stages of assessment by the scientific team before it will be released as an official result by the collaborative team.

"The majority of these things turn out to be nothing at all. It is very speculative at this stage, but there is a great deal of excitement and anticipation that something will be found which is probably why this has found its way onto the internet."

However, the official caution has not served to dampen the intense and excited speculation on various internet blogs and scientific websites.

Prosperity won’t bring you happiness, insists Archbishop in Easter message

The Archbishop of Cathedral, Dr. Rowan Williams, said in his Easter Sermon that the narrow pursuit of material goals won’t bring happiness, but only ''personal and communal fulfilment.''

Williams emphasised that joy was a result of living with an outward focus, by fostering relationships with others and the surrounding world.

The Archbishop referenced the British government’s proposals to try to measure the nation’s well being, and to seek ''happiness rather than just prosperity.''

Williams said: ''Now it's certainly a good thing that people have publicly acknowledged that there is more to life than the level of our Gross National Product, that we're just beginning to say out loud that corporate prosperity divorced from personal and communal fulfilment or stability is an empty thing.

''It seems that, just as we can't find fulfilment in just loving ourselves, so we can't just generate happiness for ourselves. It comes from outside, from relationships, environment, the unexpected stimulus of beauty - but not from any programme that we can identify.''

Dr Williams requested his listeners to consider Christians around the glob who are persecuted because of their religion, or who are coping with some form of personal grief.

"We might well remember today some of those in such situations - Christians facing threats and attacks in Pakistan or, right at the moment, in Northern Nigeria; and please pray and think of them, as some fanatics of all backgrounds seek to exploit religious differences there, even in the wake of what appears as a free and fair election.

"Or we might think of an aid worker in Congo, or a nurse or teacher in a strained and under-resourced institution, or a carer sitting through the night with a terminally ill child - people such as this will sometimes speak, shockingly, of feeling joy in the middle of what they endure."

Following on from this, Dr Williams also challenged people to look past their own preoccupations and worries.

"What we can contribute by our will or effort is not a system for making ourselves happy but a habit of readiness to receive. The person whose mind is completely cluttered with anxiety, self-absorbed worry or vanity or resentment, is going to find it hard to give way to moments of gift and surprise."

(Image from file).

Chinese Christians arrested in Easter raid

Chinese police arrested dozens of Christians when they moved to prevent a Protestant church from holding its Easter Sunday service.

The arrests form part of a continued crack-down on protesters against one-party rule, and this church in particular has a history of conflict with the government. The arrests were made after the church defied a governmental order denying them permission to worship in a public building.

Worshippers from the church were bussed away while still singing hymns, while church leaders promised to continue the protests.

"The devil Satan has taken advantage of the authority God has granted to the national government and is seeking to destroy God's church," wrote Pastor Jin Tianming. "His devil's claws have finally been revealed. Satan get thee behind me!"

"Between 20 and 30 followers were taken away," said Pastor Jin in a telephone interview from his home, where he has been under house arrest for the past fortnight.

Christians are not allowed to worship in China unless they register with the state-approved churches, but millions of Christians refuse to submit to this level of government control so they are forced to worship underground.

It is estimated that around 40 million Christians currently worship underground, while others claim the figures could be as high as 80 million. The church that endured the Easter arrests is known as Shouwang church and has around 1,500 members.

Human rights groups warn that this form of repression will only serve to raise support for the Christians.

"The Chinese government are playing a very dangerous game," said Mark Shan, a spokesman for ChinaAid, a US-based Christian rights group. "They are pushing the church into a corner and other Christians, when they see how Shouwang have been treated, may react in the same defiant way."

Easter Friday Reflection: The Cry

Who could ever forget those awful clips of 9/11, of airplanes smashing into buildings whilst crowds of people below screamed in terror? What is burnt into my memory is one particular clip where you could actually make out people yelling in fear, “Oh my God, what is happening? My God, this can’t be happening. My God, where are you?”

It’s painful but not strange to hear people calling out to God. Even the staunchest of atheists can yell out for divine assistance as reflex action in times of fear, or pain, or desperation. That’s not strange at all. What does seem strange to us, however, is the thought of God crying. For that’s how Matthew’s Gospel ends Jesus’ life. With a loud sob of desperation, a yell of fear, a cry of abandonment.

That is a strange thought. I mean, this is God after all. We expect God to be powerful and to use power. In fact, that’s why, gathered around Jesus’ cross we find these mocking crowds. People saying things like, “C’mon down from that cross. If you are God, if you are the Messiah, then show us. That cross shouldn’t be able to hold you. You saved others but you can’t even save yourself! Show us your power!”

And so as Jesus shifted on the cross, as he gathered himself to speak, the crowds fell silent – waiting. The disciples tensed up, ‘let this be the moment, show your power’ they might have thought, and they waited as well. They all waited … and then … God cried. Not a sign of power, but one of desperation!

“Eloi, Eloi. Lama sabacthani.’ ‘My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”

Now this is strange, even mysterious. It doesn’t sound divine to cry like that, it sounds human. But it shouldn’t be strange. Painful to hear, yes, but not strange. I mean we all know God HAS power, that God created with raw, effortless power. But God has shown again and again that when it comes to saving us, when it comes to finding us, that when it comes to bringing us back into relationship with him, God will not use power.

For God will not force us, he will not kick down the doors of our hearts; he will not leave us without any other choices but him. No. He will love us. And he will reach us by loving us. And that is why God cried! As Jesus said over and over to his disciples – he was prepared to take his journey of love right to it’s inevitable end point, he was prepared to face all of life with us, even those vinegar bitter tasting moments, even if it meant facing death.

Love isn’t really love until we truly share each others experiences, until we learn to walk together with someone through difficult moments. Of course, love is laughing together, but love is also crying together. … and that is why God cried. Jesus’ cry of abandonment on the cross is painful for us to hear, but it is also the most loving thing we will ever hear.

The Cry reminds us that God chooses to share all human experiences with us, even the very worst. The Cry reminds us that what was holding Jesus to the cross while the crowds mocked him was not force, it was not nails … it was love. Choice held him there!

God cried that Friday because that is the way God chooses to reach us, find us and bring us back to him. God shares our deepest places of hurt, he experiences our greatest fears, and he walks through our worst places of abandonment and loneliness. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is the cry of one who has nothing else to give and nowhere else to turn, of one who has done all that has been asked of him in the face of loneliness and betrayal. It is also the deepest cry of God’s heart.

Craig Kocher says that this desperate, anguished, gut-level cry is the cry of parents who receive the phone call of their nightmares. It is the cry of the patient diagnosed with AIDS. It is the cry of a refugee with no place to call home. It is the cry of a family waking up to no feed to eat. It is the cry of a child, orphaned by a road accident. It is the cry of all humanity, longing for a day when tears and crying and death will be no more.

In this cry from the cross, God in Christ goes to the very depths of our sadness, abandonment, sin and death. When God cried he showed us the true power of love for in that moment Jesus gathered up all of humanity’s cries and tears in his own breath and nailed them to the cross in his own body.

And this is why the church insists on calling this Friday ... Good.

For this is the moment when the story turned forever. The Cry is sin’s last gasp effort to maintain control over the world and keep the divide between God and humanity. The Cry is death in the final throes of death, one last fruitless attempt to claim victory over life.

The Cry is that moment when love washed over sin, grace won over loneliness and Life defeated death. The Cry echoes on through history, and weaves its way through all our human experiences, and if we listen carefully this Easter weekend, we will hear it too.

We will hear its good news and feel its embrace. For no matter how we feel, the truth is that we are not alone, and we never will be. We are not abandoned, for God is here.

(Image is Munch’s The Cry).