Days after a cross-country FBI operation arrested 152 sex traffickers across the U.S., Joel Osteen, senior pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, announced his support for a bill in the House of Representatives aimed at eliminating human trafficking rings. The Christian Post reports:
The bill, which is supported by both Republican and Democrat lawmakers, is intended to help eliminate human trafficking rings by "targeting the criminals who purchase sexual acts from these organizations and ensuring that they are prosecuted as human traffickers."
"The suffering associated with human trafficking resonates strongly within the Christian community, and we know of many churches, like our own, whose compassion for its victims has moved them to act," said Joel and Victoria Osteen in a statement.
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In message published on Friday, Pope Francis took the rare step of personally expressing his “esteem and friendship” to the world’s Muslims as they prepare to celebrate the end of the Ramadan fast.
While it is a long-established Vatican practice to send messages to the world’s religious leaders on their major holy days, those greetings are usually signed by the Vatican’s department for interfaith dialogue.
In his message, Francis explains that in the first year of his papacy he wanted to personally greet Muslims, “especially those who are religious leaders.”
Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, had fraught relations with Muslims. In a 2006 speech he quoted a Byzantine emperor who said Muhammad had only brought “evil and inhuman” things to the world, sparking a worldwide crisis in Christian-Muslim relations.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — For the third time, Jesus is about to change Reza Aslan’s life.
As a teenager, Aslan turned to Jesus in an evangelical youth group, where becoming a Christian made him feel like a real American.
He later studied Jesus of Nazareth in college, which led Aslan to a doctorate in the sociology of religion.
Now Aslan’s controversial new book about Jesus is about to make him a best-selling author. Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth has already reached No. 1 on Amazon.com. It’s expected to debut this weekend on The New York Times’ best-seller list, becoming the latest in a long line of controversial and profitable books about the so-called historical Jesus.
Aslan said he wants to show the power of Jesus as a flesh-and-blood human being, rather than the savior of the world. That Jesus has gotten lost in 2,000 years of church history, he said.
The United Nations issued a report on Wednesday stating that the number of civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan rose by 23 percent in the first six months of 2013, with women and children faring the worst — killed by roadside bombs almost every day. An earlier UN report noted that
"Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a child."
Over a third of Afghans are living in abject poverty, violence is escalating as NATO forces withdraw, and years of international aid has done little to decrease the abuse of women and children.
Click here to see the Atlantic's photos series on Afghan children.
What can be accomplished in just 10 days by the courageous actions of young immigrants? More than many of us would hope to accomplish in a year, or a lifetime. It has been more than a week since the nine DREAMers arrived at the U.S.-Mexico Nogales port of entry on July 22 and asked authorities to let them come back home. They were willing to risk all they have gained to fight for immigrant families that have been torn apart by the 1.7 million deportations by the Obama Administration.
In just over a week, these courageous young immigrant leaders have received widespread national attention. Tens of thousands of calls and letters from supporters and organizations around the country have called for their release, including the U.S. Jesuit Conference. Multiple protests and sit-ins by nationwide members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance have included the parents and family members of the DREAM 9, gathering support from members of Congress. Just recently, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) made a floor speech in the House and nearly 40 other house members have signed a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to take immediate action and use his discretion for their release.
It is not very difficult to understand why there is a black church and a white church in America today, or to realize that this structure will not change in the near future. The religious atmosphere created by the coming together of blacks (who were slaves) and whites (who were masters) tended to negate any possibility of developing the true unity and oneness that scripture proclaims for the church. The agendas of the slaves were vastly different from those of the masters. Unfortunately, conflict over agendas, both stated and unstated, continues to be one of the reasons that blacks and whites do not come together to worship.
Rather than a Third Great Awakening I believe we are standing in the threshold of a Great Grace Awakening. It’s a move of the Holy Spirit drawing people away from legalistic and fear-based beliefs to a place some of us would call grace.
On the surface, it may seem to fly in the face of some traditional Judeo-Christian ethics. But it is aligned with a broader, more universal ethic that seems to be developing around genuine Christian love and grace — the very essence of Jesus’ ministry and what makes it so revolutionary — as guiding principles.
Grace is the reason for the incarnation. God became human and walked in our sandals because God knows us and wants us to be known.
Grace says that there is nothing we could ever do that would make God love us less. And grace tells us that there’s nothing we could ever do that would make God love us more. You are loved simply because you are and for all of who you are. Full stop.
One year after a gunman opened fire in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., killing six worshippers, Sikhs say they are hopeful about the future and even more determined to be better understood.
“The legacy of Oak Creek is not one of bloodshed,” said Valarie Kaur, founding director of the interfaith group Groundswell, a project of Auburn Seminary in N.Y.
“[It’s of] how a community rose to bring people together to heal and to organize for lasting social change,” she told the PBS television program “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.”
![Photo courtesy U.S. Department of State [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://sojo.net/files/styles/large_rectangle_crop/public/blog/512px-U.S._Secretary_of_State_John_Kerry_shakes_hands_with_Raymond_Kelly_Commissioner_of_the_New_York_City_Police_Department_NYPD-427x284.jpg "U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Raymond Kelly. Photo courtesy U.S. Department of State, via Wikimedia")
Muslim-American groups are mounting a growing campaign to quash the potential nomination of New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly as the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Muslims say that as head of the nation’s biggest police force, the commissioner oversaw a spying program that targeted Muslims based solely on their religion, showed poor judgment by participating in a virulently anti-Islamic film, and approved a report on terrorism that equated innocuous behavior such as quitting smoking with signs of radicalization.
Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano announced she is resigning in September to become president of the University of California system.
“Mr. Kelly might be very happy where he is, but if he’s not, I’d want to know about it, because obviously he’d be very well qualified for the job,” President Barack Obama said in a July 16 interview with Univision.
Muslims are particularly indignant because Obama said on numerous occasions that he would work to end profiling.