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Life for Christians has become more difficult in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now in Egypt. I join in solidarity with the Egyptian Christians protesting our foreign policy. For more on the difficulty in Iraq, visit http://www.christiantoday.com/article/christians.in.iraq.feel.failed.by.government/28786.htm. For more on Afghanistan, visit: http://www.christiantoday.com/article/no.churches.left.in.afghanistan.us.state.department/28778.htm. Here’s an excerpt from Egyptian-Americans Protest in DC [...]
Via: My Take: Jesus would support Palestinian statehood bid – CNN Belief Blog – CNN.com Blogs.
I am not stating my support per se for what Medearis is suggesting, other than noting that Christians do need to be more thoughtful about Israeli-Palestinian relations and the desire for Palestinian statehood. I, like Medearis, have [...]
Bill Walsh at Desiring God posted a video of her testimony and also linked to the reaction of Michael Oh, the Korean president of Christ Bible Seminary in Japan.
Oh recently wrote another post on the Desiring God blog and his mission in [...]
Joseph D'Souza on the Caste System
By Scott Kistler On November 23, 2010 · Leave a Comment · In Christ & Culture, Missional Thought, Slavery, The World-Wide World
Kevin DeYoung posted his friend Jason Carter’s thoughts about the Lausanne Congress here. Here’s one part that grabbed my attention:
Perhaps the strongest prophetic voice issuing from Cape Town came from Dr. Joseph D’Souza from India when he spoke out against the Indian Caste System as (a form of modern) slavery [...]
David Field provides some heartening evidence in this paper about how the world is improving for the Church:
Evangelical defeatism is a failure of historical perspective. After all, the statistics are out there. It took 1400 years for 1% of the world’s population to become Christians and then another 360 years [...]
Some time ago I linked to an article in the New York Times about this trend. Foreign Policy had a story today that gives some historical and contemporary context of Christians leaving or converting in the face of hostility. Eden Naby and Jamsheed Choksy write:
Why Christians? [...]
The Roots of Middle Eastern Conflicts
By Scott Kistler On November 3, 2010 · Leave a Comment · In Palestinians, Politics, The World-Wide World
Lee Smith challenges the theory of “linkage,” which states that the key to resolving conflict in the Middle East is resolving the Palestinian-Israeli peace process (I’ve posted on this issue once before). I’ve noted Smith’s ideas about the Middle East a couple other times on this blog. [...]
Adventures in Christian Unity
By Scott Kistler On October 25, 2010 · 1 Comment · In The Mysterious World of American Evangelicalism, The World-Wide World
Like many Christians, I’ve wished that Christians could be more united even while I am a Protestant, a member of the most divided of the branches of the Christian tradition. Recently I read two articles about two efforts to address our current divisions. One is far away from me in Buenos [...]
Game theory and the Arab-Israeli conflict
By Scott Kistler On September 27, 2010 · Leave a Comment · In Israel, Palestinians, Politics, The World-Wide World
Lee Smith writes about his conversation with Israeli Nobel laureate Robert Aumann. Aumann believes that game theory applies to international relations:
In Aumann’s view, the post-Oslo period shows that Israel’s behavior leaves it at a serious disadvantage in a repeated game. “In games that repeat over time,” Aumann
Support for Israeli settlements declining?
By Scott Kistler On September 27, 2010 · Leave a Comment · In Israel, Palestinians, Politics, The World-Wide World
Bradley Burston, a blogger with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (in my understanding, a paper on the center-left of the Israeli political spectrum), writes:
Every revolution tends to believe that it is forever. Nowhere is this more evident than in Israel, for six decades cradle and crucible to concurrent revolutions.
But the fate of every revolutionary [...]
Book review, “King Leopold’s Ghost” by Adam Hochschild
By Scott Kistler On September 27, 2010 · Leave a Comment · In Book Reviews, History, The World-Wide World
I found this review that I wrote for my own memory after I read King Leopold’s Ghost in the winter of 2007-2008, and I figured that I would post it here. I edited it a bit today (although it still suffers from my overuse of parentheses). This is definitely one [...]
Book review, “How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind,” by Thomas Oden
By Scott Kistler On September 27, 2010 · Leave a Comment · In Africa, Book Reviews, Church History, The World-Wide World
Through his work as editor of Intervarsity Press’ forays into making ancient Christian commentary more accessible to modern people, Thomas Oden became much more aware of early African Christians’ contributions to the faith. He became convinced that early African Christianity was the “seedbed” for European Christianity, reversing the popular idea of Christianity as a Western [...]
Israel Under a Microscope II
By Scott Kistler On September 27, 2010 · Leave a Comment · In Palestinians, Politics, The World-Wide World
An essay by Yoram Hazony asks why Israel is consistently vilified in ways that other nations are not. I think that his answer considers something that I did not when I discussed why Israel finds itself under the microscope. I said that the rise of human rights [...]
Michael Totten interviewed Jonathan Spyer, a journalist who served in the Israeli army. Toward the end of the interview, Totten asked what Spyer would tell American policymakers about the Middle East. I’ll pass it on without necessarily endorsing it, since I’m still searching for the best perspectives on the region. Here [...]
Having lived in Idaho for a little over 2 years now, we have yet to see much outside Nampa & Boise. It’s on the list of things to do. So, spur of the moment Monday, we decided to take a trek up to Idaho City. Once passing the city limits of [...]
Hussein Ibish writes that the Palestinian Authority is making making substantial efforts “to create Palestine as a practical reality.” A recent economic development conference, the second of its kind, discussed “high-growth sectors, including information and communications technology, housing, and tourism.”
I’ve heard quite a bit about Salaam Fayyad’s program of institution-building, [...]
Sabah A. Salih, professor of English at Bloomsburg University, writes in his review of Paul Berman’s The Flight of the Intellectuals that Islamism is actually a movement for Arab domination, rather than the pan-Islamist movement of Islamist rhetoric:
Islamism, which is markedly different from the way most practicing Muslims in Kurdistan [...]
A short article from The Economist (May 27), notes that while Western media are decreasing their international presence, the English and Arabic Al Jazeera channels combined “have at least 60 bureaus, with 12 in Africa alone, a number unthinkable for their shrinking Western rivals.” Another 10 are supposed to be on [...]
Michael Totten argues that Israel needs to go after the hostile states of Iran and Syria when the time comes for self-defense rather than their terrorist proxies:
Prior to getting bogged down in Lebanon in the early 1980s, the Israelis racked up one lightning fast military victory over their enemies after [...]
In January, I posted about Fawaz Gerges’ argument that Hamas could be a partner in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. A Jerusalem Post editorial takes a very different point of view, arguing that Hamas has instituted an “official free-for-all declared against anyone even remotely suspected of collaboration with [...]
Vali Nasr’s The Shia Revival is among the best books that I have read in my relatively quest to understand the Middle East well enough to teach an undergraduate class on its history. Nasr, an Iranian-American professor and son of an Iranian academic, became one of the hot interviewees in the [...]
As a lot of things are, recommending a certain U.S. policy toward Iran is out of my league. Last month I read Michael Totten’s interview of Reza Khalili (a pseudonym), formerly in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard who turned into a CIA informant (here is a link to [...]
Joel sent me an article from World Affairs that presents a very unconventional picture of China: a country on the brink of revolution rather than waiting in the wings as the next superpower. Gordon Chang argues that China is actually beset with problems:
An economy dependent on exports that is declining [...]
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- "Baseball and Faith" – Steve Cornell
- Alan Burrow (Pastor of The King's Congregation in Meridian, ID) – "Faith Working"
- Ben Howard Photography
- Blazing Hope Youth Family Ranch
- Dr. Sam Storms – "Enjoying God Ministries"
- Joe Lamay – Pastor of Sovereign Grace Fellowship (South Bay, CA) and fellow El Segundo Baseball Alum
- Joel Wilhelm – "A Living Text"
- Jonathan Griffiths (Pastor at Cornerstone Church in Nampa, ID) – "Reflective Musings"
- Michael Mulconery (Elder at Sovereign Grace Fellowship of Nampa, ID) – SGF Sunday School
- My Wife's Blog – "Beloved Stranger"
- P. Andrew Sandlin (Pastor of Church of the King in Santa Cruz, CA)
- Pastor Nick Smith's Blog – "Sylvan Manor"
- Scott Kistler – "Tempora Christiana"
- William Farley (Pastor of Grace Christian Fellowship in Spokane, WA) – "The Raven"
