An Ecumenical Ministry in the Parish of St Patrick's Catholic Church In San Diego USA

米国サンディエゴの聖パトリックカトリック教会教区におけるエキュメニカル宣教

Saturday, September 17, 2022

Six different people or things described in the Bible as our “mother”

A Pentecostal pastor in Belarus turned to the United Nations to defend his right to gather with other believers and worship. Now the government is looking at legislation to make sure Christians can’t appeal to the UN.

Samaritan’s Purse is now one of the biggest nonprofits in the US, with $1 billion in annual revenue.

There are six different people or things described in the Bible as our “mother.”

God offers reason for hope when we’re tempted to “quiet quit” the church.

Behind the story

From Kate Shellnutt: Long before the invasion drew Western readers’ attention to Russia and Ukraine, I had been following news of raids, bans, and penalties targeting Christian communities in Donbas, a region of Eastern Ukraine, and Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed in 2014. The details of individual arrests and regional crackdowns typically don’t make international news, and I don’t know Russian or Ukrainian, but I was able to follow these stories thanks to a site called Forum 18.

Forum 18 is a religious freedom watchdog, run by a European nonprofit, and focused on former Soviet countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. They track policies affecting all sorts of religious groups—Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, Hare Krishnas, Baptists, and other Christians. Thanks to analysis by Forum 18, we learned how evangelicals were punished most under Russia’s anti-evangelism law. And in the case of today’s story by Daniel Silliman, we learned the details of a legal fight in Belarus involving the persecution of a Protestant church.

In other news

How a Pentecostal pastor helps search for missing migrants on the Mexican border.

Sports writer Jonathan Tjarks has died at 34. In addition to his excellent reporting on basketball, Tjarks wrote movingly about his faith, fatherhood, and facing death. He shared the story of his conversion with CT in 2018.

A growing number of Pentecostals are participating in the annual gathering of the World Council of Churches.

North Carolina finally vacated the conviction of a Charlotte pastor who spent eight years behind bars for a robbery he didn’t commit.

A new podcast is documenting the music of serpent-handling Pentecostal churches.

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