The United States has halted all funding to a UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees, in a move likely to further heighten tensions between the Palestinians and the Trump administration.
Key points:
UNRWA says it helps around 5 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East
The US had withheld $82m of funding in January, pending a review
The UN has called for other countries to fill funding gap, with Germany already offering to help
US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the business model and fiscal practices of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were an "irredeemably flawed operation."
"The administration has carefully reviewed the issue and determined that the United States will not make additional contributions to UNRWA," she said in a statement.
Ms Nauert said the agency's, "endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries is simply unsustainable and has been in crisis mode for many years."
UNRWA rejected the criticisms, with spokesman Chris Gunness describing it as "a force for regional stability".
Speaking in Jordan, where more than 2 million registered Palestinian refugees live, including 370,000 in 10 refugee camps, Mr Gunness said: "It is a deeply regrettable decision … some of the most disadvantaged, marginalised and vulnerable people on this planet are likely to suffer."
Phoenix, Arizona: An African American NFL legend, the first openly gay Republican congressman to address a national GOP convention, and a registered Democrat who runs an investment firm helping low-income Latinos. It's hard to imagine a trio that more firmly stand in contrast to the vision espoused by President Donald Trump.
And those are just a few of the tributes in the Phoenix portion of John McCain's nearly week-long memorial services. Intentional or not, the late Arizona senator and his family have put together, right down to Saturday's gospel reading at Washington National Cathedral, a set of services that will serve as a symbolic final rebuke of Trump and his presidency.
By the time McCain is buried on Sunday at the US Naval Academy, the parade of those paying tribute to the 2008 GOP presidential nominee will include two ex-presidents who have publicly feuded with Trump; a Russian dissident; a former GOP senator who disavowed Trump near the end of his 2016 campaign; and the former mayor of Trump's hometown who is actively supporting Democrats this fall.
McCain had a large input into the services as he slowly lost his battle with brain cancer over the last six months, giving him time to reach out to former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to ask them to give eulogies at Saturday's service.
Those two have periodically opposed Trump's policies, particularly when his administration was separating migrant families at the border. The Bush family, like the McCains this week, declined to invite Trump to the funeral for the late first lady Barbara Bush earlier this year.
In the days after immigration agents raided a dusty concrete plant on the west side of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, seizing 32 men from Mexico and Central America, the Rev. Trey Hegar, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, got into an impassioned argument on his Facebook page. “The Bible doesn’t promote helping criminals !!!! ” a Trump supporter wrote. Mr. Hegar answered with Leviticus: “When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” The Trump supporter came back with the passage in the Gospel of Mark about rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and added for good measure: “Immigration laws are good and Godly! We elected our leaders and God allowed it.”
President Trump’s immigration crackdown has been promoted with biblical righteousness by senior members of his administration, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And in American heartland communities where the president is popular, the crackdown is often debated — by supporters and critics alike — through the lens of Christian morality.
In Mount Pleasant, a town of 8,500 in rural southeast Iowa that voted heavily for Mr. Trump, the president’s immigration policies created a sharp, unexpected fracture in the days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descended, on May 9. Fault lines appeared among public officials, businesses and, especially, the town’s many churches.
“This whole immigration thing has been an abstraction,” said State Representative Dave Heaton, a Republican from Mount Pleasant. “It’s been on TV and in the newspapers. And all of a sudden it’s here in our town. Relationships and everything are all of a sudden up for grabs.” It was a few weeks before parentchild separations at the border exploded into the news, exposing divisions among faith groups nationally.
Mainline Protestant churches harshly condemned Mr. Trump for his policy of separating families. Evangelical leaders also deplored the separations, although they largely deflected blame away from Mr. Trump. The expressions of dismay helped to drive his eventual retreat from the policy, but they reflected the same interfaith divide that opened in Mount Pleasant over the workplace raid, another facet of the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy.
Mr. Hegar, a Texan who served four years in the Marines before attending a Presbyterian seminary, finally asked the Trump supporter he was debating on Facebook: “Which Scripture do we obey?” He answered himself: “The one from Jesus to ‘Do unto others’ is what we choose.” Mr. Hegar’s church on Walnut Street is across from the site of Mount Pleasant’s most popular event, a Labor Day festival of steam-powered tractors and other farm machinery. In the days and weeks after the raid, the church became a hectic crossroads for family members of the detained men and their supporters. Parishioners in a group called Iowa Welcomes Immigrant Neighbors raised $80,000 to help detainees’ families pay rent, utilities and legal fees. Members of other mainline Protestant churches, like Lutherans, contributed to the fund, as did Roman Catholics at St. Alphonsus, where a Spanish-language Mass is held once a month. Notably absent from the donor roll, though, were Mount Pleasant’s evangelical churches.
Mr. Hegar said he heard relatives of a detained man say that the pastor of the evangelical church they have attended for years had not called to ask if he could help them. “My heart breaks for that,” Mr. Hegar said. The town’s evangelical pastors, whom he knows, are compassionate individuals, he said, “but to see nothing, after something like this in their backyards — I’m shocked.” He attributed their silence to the strong political alignment between American evangelicals and Mr. Trump, who counts heavily on their votes. “The nationalistic politics and theology goes hand in hand now,” Mr. Hegar said.
Pastors of three leading evangelical churches in Mount Pleasant declined repeated requests over several weeks seeking comment for this article. One evangelical pastor who did agree to an interview in the days after the raid was Jim Erwin, the head of Wellspring Evangelical Free Church.
He said no one from the mainline churches had suggested he raise money; if they had, he said, he might have chipped in. But Mr. Erwin added that he believed the detentions were justified: “Because they’re breaking the law, I recognize the authorities do need to come in and do that.”
On a day in mid-May when the president referred to immigrants who join gangs as “animals,” more than 100 people crowded into the fellowship hall of the First Presbyterian Church, including about 25 wives and children of the detained men.
Walfred Urizar-Lopez, 15, said that he and his father, Elmer Urizar-Lopez, 41, fled Guatemala for their lives after a gang tried to recruit Walfred as a drug courier. His father had gone to the police, but their advice was to cooperate with the gang; his father refused. “The gang told my dad he has no idea what kind of problems he will have,” Walfred said at the church, speaking through a translator.
The arrest of his father in the factory raid left Walfred, a high school sophomore, alone in Mount Pleasant. In jeans and a flannel shirt, he thrust his hands into his pockets and fought back tears. “His situation right now, it’s very bad,” said Eneida Carillo, whose family, also from Guatemala, had taken Walfred in. She said a lawyer had told them that day that Walfred’s father would probably be deported.
Ms. Carillo began to cry. “As soon as his dad gets back, they will probably kill him,’’ she said.
Workplace raids like the one in Mount Pleasant were de-emphasized by the Obama administration, but they have been stepped up sharply under Mr. Trump. Experts say the raids are meant to deter immigrants from showing up for work or entering the country to seek jobs. Raids at 7-Elevens across the country in January and at a Tennessee slaughterhouse in April made headlines; scores of workers were detained at Ohio meatpacking plants in late June. No charges have been filed against the owners of the Midwest Precast Concrete plant in Mount Pleasant that was raided.
An ICE spokesman declined to comment, citing a continuing investigation. According to Robin Clark-Bennett of the Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa, 23 of the 32 arrested men have been released on bond, three have been deported and five remain in jail facing criminal charges.
While emotions ran high at the meeting in the fellowship hall, not everyone in Mount Pleasant, nor even at First Presbyterian, sided with Mr. Hegar. “I agree with our president: our borders, we can’t open it to everybody,” said Rusty King, the church’s custodian, the following day. “We’ve got enough poor people here in Iowa that need help,” Mr. King said. “I work three jobs and still live paycheck to paycheck.” After an initial conversation with a reporter about immigration, he seemed to avoid follow-up calls and texts. But he had a granddaughter, Angel King, pass along a Facebook post written by a young man from Mount Pleasant that echoed Mr. King’s own views. “I can’t hold my tongue any longer,” Garrett Carlston wrote in the post on May 10, when supporters of the detainees were rallying at the Henry County Courthouse. “I feel bad for the families that are going to be torn apart by this but it’s hard for me to sit here and act like it isn’t the fault of the people who brought them across the border.” He wrote that the vigil-keepers lacked sympathy for American citizens. “What about the ones living in Mount Pleasant who couldn’t find a job because they were employing illegal immigrants instead?”
The view that immigrants take jobs from citizens or depress wages was a common one, but it was disputed by local business owners. The unemployment rate in Henry County is 2.9 percent, and many factories display “Hiring” signs. Gary Crawford, who owns Mt. Pleasant Tire (“We keep you rolling”), said he paid tire installers $16 to $24 an hour, with full benefits. “I know most of the people who run the factories,” he said. “They just can’t find help.” Mr. Crawford belongs to St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, and on the Sunday after the ICE raid, he heard Father Paul Connolly, with the detained men in mind, devote his homily to the good Samaritan, the exemplar of caring for strangers. “All of us were immigrants at one time,” the priest said.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY WILLIAM WIDMER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESMount Pleasant, Iowa, where President Trump’s immigration policies created a sharp, unexpected fracture after federal agents raided a concrete plant there. Above left, the Rev. Trey Hegar meeting with a worker who had been arrested by immigration agents.
From The Editor: I reread this article and found that it reminded me of the plight of the Jews in Hitler's Europe. Although, I am not pleading any better for my country, Australia. We have been busy doling out our own share of misery through separation and imprisonment and inhumanity. I would like to remind people that there are people of many faiths and none who sheltered many of the Jews of Europe in Hitler's empire. However, in this paragraph, I would remind people of the Barmen Declaration and the great people who signed it. Clause 3 of the declaration says:
The message and order of the church should not be influenced
by the current political convictions.
So many Christians and denominations in 1930s Germany had strayed from the truths of the Gospels into realms of power and self-service. Few Christian denominations and leaders stood firm and fewer were able to shine a light on the correct path. As it was in the 1930s, this century is showing us - through the great journeys of refugees - who are those following the correct paths of faith. Those who are not following similar journeys and pathways will have questions to answer ... in this world or the next.
I don’t know about you, but as a teacher, and after eighteen attacks on school children in less than two months this year, and after the AR-15 assault rifle has been used in some ten school attacks to kill many of our innocent children over the last few years, it is time to say to the gun dealers, to the NRA, and to Congress and to our President—- ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! At a minimum, the lapsed assault weapons ban needs to be reinstituted immediately. These are not hunting rifles, these are not like pistols used for personal protection, they are weapons made specifically for military purposes and should only be in the hands of law enforcement, and the military. Period.
No fair or reasonable interpretation of our ‘Bill of Rights’ could ever find a justification for allowing ordinary citizens to buy these sorts of weapons on the open market—- NONE! The right to a ‘well-ordered militia’ has nothing to do with this at all. Imagine our Founding Fathers saying ‘we think it’s a slippery slope to ban ordinary citizens from owning cannons!!’ Ridiculous.
It is time as well to give up on the mythological arguments like: 1) guns don’t kill people; and 2) the solution to violence in our society is more guns in more hands! Neither of these propositions can stand close scrutiny, especially in a society full of mentally ill and fearful and violent people who nevertheless can still get their hands on such weapons. Take a look at what happened in Australia when more strict gun laws went into effect. Gun violence went down dramatically, and stayed there. All of the usual arguments against better gun control laws are bogus. They are excuses, and I would urge the responsible gun owners and NRA members in our country to be the first to stand up for an assault weapons ban, and while we are at it, against the legal purchase of gun clips and gun stocks that allow multiple rounds to be fired continuously.
I am calling on my own Senators, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell to stop their silence on this issue and do something about it. They should introduce legislation during this current session of Congress to deal with this issue. Enough is enough is enough.
It is one of the most telltale signs of the state of the soul of a society in regard to what it allows to happen to the most vulnerable members of that society— our children, the elderly, the infirm. I was taught a long time ago that my rights end where someone else’s life begins. And if one’s stand on guns is complicit in allowing the murder of our children, then something is terribly wrong, and we need to sacrifice a supposed right, for the sake of the life of others. After all, life is the most basic commodity in everything. Without human life, we cannot even talk about human rights. Protecting life is far more fundamental than protecting the rights of the living. Enough is enough.
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2018/02/15/enough-enough-enough-time-reinstitute-assault-weapons-ban/#F6P0zdFQ9T4FKQRw.99
In the past it has been common for me to trash our Sunday plans when an event such as the mass shooting in Florida takes place, and start all over. Sean Spyres is to be applauded for being both effective and gracious about last minute changes. However, this time, I am going to stay the course and not switch to talk about the Florida murders. I have noticed that the humorous news site, The Onion, has taken to re-printing the same article after every mass shooting, underscoring how common and how repetitive these tragedies are:
Last Thursday morning, the President tweeted the following:
Will be heading over shortly to make remarks at The National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. Great religious and political leaders, and many friends, including T.V. producer Mark Burnett of our wonderful 14 season Apprentice triumph, will be there.
“This ought to be good,” I thought, in the same way that a multiple-car crash on the interstate is “good.”
This is not the first time that the annual prayer breakfast and “The Apprentice” have strangely melded in Trump’s imagination. Last year at his first prayer breakfast, the newly inaugurated President opened by wistfully noting that leaving “The Apprentice” was “when I knew for sure I was doing it”—“it” being the Presidency. He followed by noting how spectacularly unsuccessful his replacement, movie star and former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, had been.
And we know how that turned out. The ratings went right down the tubes. It’s been a total disaster . . . And I want to just pray for Arnold, if we can, for those ratings, okay?
And have a nice breakfast.
Truth be told, Trump’s remarks at the breakfast last Thursday turned out to be a disappointment for those hoping for the latest random, off-the-wall, totally offensive Presidential sound bite. It also was a disappointment for anyone expecting that something thoughtful or insightful might be said about prayer or faith. For those, however, who can’t get enough of American exceptionalism, “We’re #1,” and a Christian nationalism built around the conviction that God likes us best, it was a speech straight out of central casting. A few highlights:
Faith is central to American life and to liberty. Our founders invoked our Creator four times in the Declaration of Independence. Our currency declares, “In God We Trust.” And we place our hands on our hearts as we recite the Pledge of Allegiance and proclaim we are “One Nation Under God.”
Our rights are not given to us by man, our rights come from our Creator . . . That is why the words “Praise Be To God” are etched atop the Washington Monument, and those same words are etched into the hearts of our people.
So today, we praise God for how truly blessed we are to be American.
So today, inspired by our fellow citizens, let us resolve to find the best within ourselves. Let us pray for that extra measure of strength and that extra measure of devotion.
As long as we open our eyes to God’s grace and open our hearts to God’s love, then America will forever be the land of the free, the home of the brave, and a light unto all nations.
The President’s speech writer gave him all sorts of red meat to throw to his base, as well to those who like their prayer and faith seasoned with assurances that we are God’s favorites, God’s most recent “chosen people.” And he threw the meat effectively.
There are all sorts of ways to push back, of course, starting with pointing out that the word “Creator” in the Declaration of Independence and the word “God” on our currency and on top of the Washington Monument refer to an impersonal and shadowy Deist God, a divinity so different from what those obsessed with Christian exceptionalism imagine their pet Deity to be as to be unrecognizable. But as a college professor, I know that history lessons and textual analysis tend to have little impact on what people choose to believe. We hear what we want to hear and see what we want to see, until someone or something jars us into awareness. Trump’s National Prayer Breakfast remarks last Thursday left me longing for just such a jarring occasion.
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/freelancechristianity/donald-trump-national-prayer-breakfast/#cUrURJrMKcDV1fU6.99 And if you have read this and you think that Trump is God's pick for President of the USA, you might like to read this article
I do get lost in the internet from time to time. By that I mean that I discover a marvellous site and explore it and what it leads to and, afterwards, I can't recall how I got there in the first place. Such it has been this morning and I have finished up - here in Australia - getting enrolled in a Religious Studies course at Harvard in the USA.
I have a Bachelor's degree from the University of Queensland here in Australia which includes a major in Religious Studies. Here is what decided me to plunge into this Harvard Course. It is/was the sales pitch of Professor Diane Moore of Harvard University that spurred me on to enrol in this course together with the angle it is taking - as well as the space and place of religions to-day.
I also think that the description given by Professor Moore will give me a sound basis for updating my knowledge of the place of religion in the world as it is to-day. The world - and its people and its social and ecological milieu - is not an easy creation to get one's head around - however, a sound overview of religion together with my background in sociology and politics should help me to come to a reasonable assessment of the world as it is to-day.
I would love to hear from readers of this blog. Would you be interested in venturing into the academic world of Religious Studies? Professor Moore's course would be a good start, a way of dipping one's toes in the water. The course costs $50 - and, of course, this is in $US so you would need to check out the rate of exchange in your own country. You can opt for a verification certificate at the end of the course.
Judith Butler takes on Richard Spencer and white supremacist support for Israel while unraveling the dangerous mislabeling of BDS activism as antisemitic
"If the sign of antisemitism, the proof of antisemitism is a willingness to be critical of the State of Israel, then the historical and contemporary meaning of antisemitism has become highly reduced in the service of defending the State of Israel."
Judith Butler (UC Berkeley professor and JVP advisor)
In August of 2011, more than 30,000 people cheered wildly as the then U.S. presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry – now secretary of energy in the Trump administration – came to the center stage at “The Response: A Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis” at Reliant Stadium in Houston. Perry quoted from the Bible and preached about the need for salvation that comes from Jesus. He concluded with a prayer for a country he believed to be overwhelmed by problems:
“We see discord at home. We see fear in the marketplace. We see anger in the halls of government.”
He then proceeded to ask God for forgiveness for forgetting “who made us, who protects us, and who blesses us.” In response, the crowd exploded into cheers and praise to God.
Worshippers pray with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, seen at center and on screen, at The Response, a daylong prayer and fast rally, Aug. 6, 2011, at Reliant Stadium in Houston.AP Photo/Pat Sullivan
Five years later, on April 9, 2016, and 1,500 miles away at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, tens of thousands of people gathered to pray for the supernatural transformation of America. The event consisted of more than 16 hours of healing sessions, worship music and prophecy from some of the most popular Charismatic Christian leaders in the world.
While not directly affiliated, these two events and the leaders who organized them are central players in a movement that we call “Independent Network Charismatic,” or INC, Christianity in our recently released book, “The Rise of Network Christianity.”
Based on our research, we believe that INC Christianity is significantly changing the religious landscape in America – and its politics.
Here is what we found about INC
INC Christianity is led by a network of popular independent religious entrepreneurs, often referred to as “apostles.” They have close ties, we found, to conservative U.S. politicians, including Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry and more recently President Donald Trump.
Charismatic Christians emphasize supernatural miracles and divine interventions, but INC Christianity is different from other charismatics – and other Christian denominations in general – in the following ways:
It is not focused primarily on building congregations but rather on spreading beliefs and practices through media, conferences and ministry schools.
It is not so much about proselytizing to unbelievers as it is about transforming society through placing Christian believers in powerful positions in all sectors of society.
It is organized as a network of independent leaders rather than as formally organized denominations.
INC Christianity is the fastest-growing Christian group in America and possibly around the world. Over the 40 years from 1970 to 2010, the number of regular attenders of Protestant churches as a whole shrunk by an average of .05 percent per year, while independent neo-charismatic congregations (a category in which INC groups reside) grew by an average of 3.24 percent per year.
Its impact, however, is much greater than can be measured in church attendance. This is because INC Christianity is not centrally concerned with building congregations, but spreading beliefs and practices.
Bill Johnson, pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California.Kevin Shorter, CC BY
The influence of INC Christianity can be seen in the millions of hits on manyof theirweb-basedmediasites, large turnouts at stadium rallies and conferences, and millions of dollars in media sales. In our interviews with leaders, we found that Bethel, an INC ministry based in Redding, California, for example, in 2013 had an income of US$8.4 million in media sales (music, books, DVDs, web-based content) and $7 million in tuition to their Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry.
According to the director of media services at the Kansas City-based International House of Prayer (IHOP), their website receives over 25 million hits every year from all over the world and is one of the top 50 websites in the world in terms of viewed video content (a million hours of watched video content per month).
Appeal of INC
As part of our research we conducted in-depth interviews with senior leaders, staff and current and former participants in INC Christian ministries. We also conducted supplementary interviews with Christian leaders and scholars with knowledge of the changing religious landscape and attended conferences, numerous church services, ministry school sessions, healing sessions and exorcisms. In all, we conducted 41 in-depth interviews.
Our primary conclusion is that the growth of these groups is largely the result of their network governance structure. When compared to the oversight and accountability of formal congregations and denominations, these structures allow for more experimentation. This includes “extreme” experiences of the supernatural, unorthodox beliefs and practices, and financing as well as marketing techniques that leverage the power of the internet.
In our research, we witnessed the appeal of INC Christianity, particularly among young people. We saw the thrill of holding impromptu supernatural healing sessions in the emergency room of a large public hospital, the intrigue of ministry school class sessions devoted to the techniques of casting out demonic spirits and the adventure of teams of young people going out into public places, seeking direct guidance from God as to whom to heal or to relay specific divine messages.
‘Seven mountains of culture’
In addition to the growth numbers, the importance of INC Christianity lies in the fact that its proponents have a fundamentally different view of the relationship between the Christian faith and society than most Christian groups throughout American history.
Most Christian groups in America have seen the role of the church as connecting individuals to God through the saving grace of Jesus and building congregations that provide communities of meaning and belonging through worship services. They also believe in serving and providing for the needs their local communities. Such traditional Christian groups believe that although the world can be improved, it will not be restored to God’s original plan (until Jesus comes back again to rule the Earth).
INC beliefs, however, are different – their leaders are not content simply to connect individuals to God and grow congregations. Most INC Christian groups we studied seek to bring heaven or God’s intended perfect society to Earth by placing “kingdom-minded people” in powerful positions at the top of all sectors of society.
INC leaders have labeled them the “seven mountains of culture.” These include business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family and religion. In this form of “trickle-down Christianity,” they believe if Christians rise to the top of all seven “mountains,” society will be completely transformed.
One INC leader we interviewed summed it up this way:
“The goal of this new movement is transforming social units like cities, ethnic groups, nations rather than individuals…if Christians permeate each mountain and rise to the top of all seven mountains…society would have biblical morality, people would live in harmony, there would be peace and not war, there would be no poverty.”
We heard these ideas repeatedly in most of our interviews, at events we attended and in INC media materials.
Most significantly, since the 2016 presidential election, some INC leaders have released public statements claiming that the Trump presidency is part of fulfilling God’s plan to “bring heaven to Earth” by placing believers in top posts, including Rick Perry, who is currently heading the Energy Department; Betsy DeVos directing the Department of Education; and Ben Carson leading the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Changing the landscape
INC Christianity is a movement to watch because we think it will continue to draw adherents in large numbers in the future. It will produce a growing number of Christians who see their goal not just as saving souls but as transforming society by taking control over its institutions.
We see the likelihood of INC Christians taking over the “seven mountains of culture” as slim. However, we also believe that this movement is sure to shake up the religious and political landscape for generations to come.
