A new form of abortion advocacy; US murder rates rise...more

Anti-Israel activism hits elementary school in Ithaca, NY   An uproar is brewing in Ithaca, New York, after anti-Israel activists bragged on Facebook how they managed to bring Palestinian activist Bassem Tamimi to a third-grade class as part of a presentation on the suffering of Palestinian children at the hands of Israel.

According to the activists, the event took place on Friday morning, September 18, 2015 at the Beverly J. Martin Elementary School.

Tamimi is best known for his use of children, including his own, for media purposes. The game goes like this: Tamimi’s children and other children from the village of Nabi Saleh are encouraged to confront Israeli soldiers in the hope of provoking a reaction. The children are surrounded by a phalanx of photographers and videographers waiting for the viral moment when the Israeli soldier reacts, which then is fed to the media through the Tamimi media operation and international activists who often participate...

'2000 Years of Christian Civilization Destroyed on Obama's Watch'   ...The archbishop of Canterbury recently warned British Prime Minister David Cameron that his government’s refugee policy was discriminating against Christians because Christians are not among the refugees being helped in UN camps. They’re not in the UN camps because they fear persecution from radicalized Muslim refugees.

A new form of abortion advocacy is about to change our debates ...I expect that in the coming years abortion rights supporters will execute a tactical retreat that admits the humanity of the unborn, conjoined with a strong counter-offensive dismissing the moral relevance of that biological fact. What matters, advocates will increasingly assert, is the state’s guarantee that women’s reproductive desires are fulfilled—with abortion viewed as a positively good way of doing so. Pro-lifers had better quickly discern how to counter the new candidly explicit pro-abortion advocacy...

'Europe's 1930s Jew Hatred Raised its Ugly Head Again'  Science Minister Ofir Akunis (Likud) responded sharply on Monday morning to reports quoting a senior European Union (EU) official as saying the labeling of Israeli products from Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights will begin in October, as early as next week.

"The revelation of hatred against Jews that we've known from recent history raises its ugly head again," said the minister.

"It is saddening that the European Parliament hasn't learned a thing from history, and works today with the same deviant means known to us from the 1930s, which marked the start of the greatest tragedy in the history of humanity."

In referencing the labeling of Jewish goods by the genocidal Nazi regime back in the 1930s, Akunis echoed criticism leveled earlier this month by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu against the European Parliament's decision, when he said, "we have historical memory of what happened when Europe labeled Jewish products."...

U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies  In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.

“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”...

Summer of bloodshed as US murder rates rise  ...After years in decline, the pace of homicides is on the rise in some 30 big American cities...

Blasts rock Nigerian city of Maiduguri  ...Three blasts have struck the north-eastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, the army says.

A spokesman blamed the Islamist militant group Boko Haram for the attack. The group was founded in Maiduguri.

Unconfirmed reports say as many as eight people may have died from the blasts...

Social Media Etiquette For Christians
1 Timothy paints a wonderful picture of leadership as it pertains to the life of a Christian. If any of us aspire to lead others, (which we all should) we must take the contents of 1 Timothy to heart and evaluating our lives from the inside out. I think we should do the same for our social media posts...

A Powerful Practice for Prayer
...Never resist the least urge to pray. What if you lived that way? What if we all lived that way? Our lives and our churches would be bathed in prayer. I believe we would be living in much greater faithfulness to God’s command to “pray without ceasing.”

So why don’t you try it? See what difference it makes in your life, in your family, in your church, when you stop resisting those urges to pray, and when you joyfully respond to every impulse...

Through African Eyes
...One important difference, however, has been the enduring importance of traditional conceptions of family and morality. This largely shields Africans from the cultural upheavals that America has suffered, including redefinitions of male-female roles, chastity, holiness, and, of course, the normalization of homosexual sex. Liberal American Christians judge the African position on homosexuality as cruel to one set of human beings. But Africans have no problem in naming homosexuality a sin and praying for the redemption of all sinners. We heed the parable of the wheat and the weeds in Matthew 13. We remember that the harvest and separation of the wheat from the weeds is none of our business and belongs to the not yet, the final consummation of the Kingdom of God. There should be no place for homophobia in the African church. But there is also no place for redefining the Word of God.

As a result, Africans still believe in marriage as the union of man and woman and view homosexuality as contrary to God’s design and will, a reflection of the broken sinfulness of humanity. To hear mainstream Western media and Western liberals dismiss African disapproval of same-sex relations as the work of right-wing American Evangelical groups brings to mind a long history of patronizing attitudes and contempt. The fact that the views of the vast majority of African society on issues of sex and marriage align with those of American Evangelicals does not mean Africans are mimicking or acting as proxies of American anti-gay groups. African views, which are shared by the overwhelming majority of non-Western societies, are based on sound biblical interpretation that reinforces and is reinforced by the traditional African view of life, family, community, and sexual ethics.

African societies also have a strong communal dimension. Sin is not an individual, private, or merely interior reality. Life is communal and holistic, natural and supernatural, and so sin has social, political, environmental, and even cosmic consequences. This sense of the wholeness and interconnectedness of life means individuals are accountable to one another, for, as St. Paul writes, “if one member suffers, all suffer together, and if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” Liberal American theologians may regard the redefinition of marriage as a limited, contained adjustment of doctrine. For Africans, to revise a part is to disrupt the whole... (Read all-great article!)