Showing posts with label jews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jews. Show all posts

Friday 10 April 2020

According to Pew Most White Evangelicals Don’t Think COVID-19 is a Medical Crisis

In 2011 the International Health Regulations Review Committee already gave a warning that
“The world is ill-prepared to respond to a severe influenza pandemic or to any similarly global, sustained and threatening public-health emergency.
In certain countries or states, we the last few years have seen a grow in evangelical and Pentecostal churches. Several of those evangelical denominations slid or slipped off to become very conservative or sometimes even very fundamental Christian groups.

The nonpartisan American think tank, Pew Research Center, based in the Washington, D.C. area does polling, research into American social issues, politics,  public opinion and demographic trends, If you read any newspaper or watch regular news you see their material, as it is used regularly
  In early March of 2020 Pew did a survey of white evangelicals from March 10 through 16. In the United States CoViD-19 was declared a national emergency on March 13, 2020. Here is what Pew says.

 Around three-quarters of white evangelicals (77%) say they are at least somewhat confident that Trump is doing a good job responding to the outbreak, including roughly half who say they are very confident. Majorities of white evangelicals say Trump has assessed the risks of the situation correctly (64%) and that the crisis has been blown out of proportion by the media (76%), while just a quarter (24%) say Trump hasn’t taken risks tied to the coronavirus seriously enough.
By comparison, about half of Americans overall (52%) say Trump has underplayed the risks, including majorities who say this among the religiously unaffiliated (64%), black Protestants (67%) and Jews (73%)
Close to 1,000 students some from high infection areas were encouraged to come back to campus in central Virginia.

We can notice a blatant disregard to face the facts. Pandemics happen and history is full of them. In the United States they, like in many other places, have pandemics every so often. Influenza, small-pox, measles, scarlet fever, etc… have all happened in the history of the United States from colonial times to current. Many evangelicals do not seem to understand that people should be protected and in many cases also receive vaccinations against such diseases to avoid worse scenarios. 

  It is incredible that today when one has so much coverage of bad cases all over Europe that several American churches are still calling their flock to meet and want to have big Easter gatherings this weekend.

This irresponsible attitude to ignore the rules of good public health indicates a totally irresponsible attitude without a deep love for other people.

+

Preceding
Using fears of the deadly coronavirus
Observance of the Lord’s Evening Meal
Catholics facing a totally different Holy Week


++

Find also to read
  1. The unseen enemy
  2. Making deeper cuts than some terrorist attacks of the near past
  3. Mel Brooks saying “go home” to Max Brooks
  4. CoViD-19 warnings
  5. President Trump shall have to recognise that Immigrant Workers Are Vital to the U.S.A.
  6. In denial, Donald Trump continues to insist that nothing serious is at hand and everything is in control
  7. Under-reporting the total number of coronavirus cases
  8. José Antonio Vergara talking in Esperanto about the outbreak of the epidemic
  9. Margaret Zaleski-Zamenho from Paris telling in Esperanto about the situation in France
  10. Coronavirus on March 11 declared a global pandemic on March 31 affecting more than 177 countries
  11. Europe in Chaos for a Pandemic
  12. Only a few days left before 14 Nisan
  13. Even in Corona time You are called on to have the seder
  14. Observance of the Lord’s Evening Meal
  15. One Passover tradition asking to provide the less fortunate with foods and help
  16. In a time when we must remain in our place
  17. Hosting a Virtual Seder During a Pandemic
  18. Love in the Time of Corona
  19. Recrafting our World
  20. CoViD-19 warnings
  21. Anxiety Management During Pandemic Days~
  22. Hope on the Horizon: Pandemic Anxiety Management II~

Sunday 3 June 2018

Negative views of immigrants, Muslims and Jews

Both non-practicing and churchgoing Christians are more likely than the unaffiliated to hold negative views of immigrants, Muslims and Jews

The Pew Center survey, which was conducted following a surge of immigration to Europe from Muslim-majority countries, asked many questions about national identity, religious pluralism and immigration.

Most Western Europeans say they are willing to accept Muslims and Jews in their neighbourhoods and in their families, and most reject negative statements about these groups. And, on balance, more respondents say immigrants are honest and hardworking than say the opposite.
But a clear pattern emerges: Both church-attending and non-practicing Christians are more likely than religiously unaffiliated adults in Western Europe to voice anti-immigrant and anti-minority views.
For example, in the UK, 45% of church-attending Christians say Islam is fundamentally incompatible with British values and culture, as do roughly the same share of non-practicing Christians (47%). But among religiously unaffiliated adults, fewer (30%) say Islam is fundamentally incompatible with their country’s values. There is a similar pattern across the region on whether there should be restrictions on Muslim women’s dress, with Christians more likely than “nones” to say Muslim women should not be allowed to wear any religious clothing.

Being Christian in Western Europe at the beginning of the 21st century #2

The figures you find in #1 raise some obvious questions:
  •  What is the meaning of Christian identity in Western Europe today?
  •  And how different are non-practicing Christians from religiously unaffiliated Europeans – many of whom also come from Christian backgrounds?
The Pew Research Center study – which involved more than 24,000 telephone  interviews with randomly selected adults, including nearly 12,000 non-practicing Christians – finds that Christian identity remains a meaningful marker in Western Europe, even among those who seldom go to church. It is not just a “nominal” identity devoid of practical importance. On the contrary, the religious, political and cultural views of non-practicing Christians often differ from those of church-attending Christians and religiously unaffiliated adults. For example:
  • Although many non-practicing Christians say they do not believe in God “as described in the Bible,” they do tend to believe in some other higher power or spiritual force. By contrast, most church-attending Christians say they believe in the biblical depiction of God, though of most of them we do know they believe in the human doctrinal god, namely the trinity. And a clear majority of religiously unaffiliated adults do not believe in any type of higher power or spiritual force in the universe.
  • Non-practicing Christians tend to express more positive than negative views toward churches and religious organizations, saying they serve society by helping the poor and bringing communities together. Their attitudes toward religious institutions are not quite as favourable as those of church-attending Christians, but they are more likely than religiously unaffiliated Europeans to say churches and other religious organizations contribute positively to society.
  • Christian identity in Western Europe is associated with higher levels of negative sentiment toward immigrants and religious minorities. On balance, self-identified Christians – whether they attend church or not – are more likely than religiously unaffiliated people to express negative views of immigrants, as well as of Muslims and Jews.
  • Non-practicing Christians are less likely than church-attending Christians to express nationalist views. Still, they are more likely than “nones” to say that their culture is superior to others and that it is necessary to have the country’s ancestry to share the national identity (e.g., one must have Spanish family background to be truly Spanish).
  • The vast majority of non-practicing Christians, like the vast majority of the unaffiliated in Western Europe, favour legal abortion and same-sex marriage. Church-attending Christians are more conservative on these issues, though even among churchgoing Christians, there is substantial support – and in several countries, majority support – for legal abortion and same-sex marriage.
  • Nearly all churchgoing Christians who are parents or guardians of minor children (those under 18) say they are raising those children in the Christian faith. Among non-practicing Christians, somewhat fewer – though still the overwhelming majority – say they are bringing up their children as Christians. By contrast, religiously unaffiliated parents generally are raising their children with no religion.


Religious identity and practice are not the only factors behind Europeans’ beliefs and opinions on these issues. For instance, highly educated Europeans are generally more accepting of immigrants and religious minorities, and religiously unaffiliated adults tend to have more years of schooling than non-practicing Christians. But even after statistical techniques are used to control for differences in education, age, gender and political ideology, the survey shows that churchgoing Christians, non-practicing Christians and unaffiliated Europeans express different religious, cultural and social attitudes. (See below in this overview and Chapter 1.)

These are among the key findings of a new Pew Research Center survey of 24,599 randomly selected adults across 15 countries in Western Europe. Interviews were conducted on mobile and landline telephones from April to August, 2017, in 12 languages. The survey examines not just traditional Christian religious beliefs and behaviours, opinions about the role of religious institutions in society, and views on national identity, immigrants and religious minorities, but also Europeans’ attitudes toward Eastern and New Age spiritual ideas and practices. And the second half of this Overview more closely examines the beliefs and other characteristics of the religiously unaffiliated population in the region.
While the vast majority of Western Europeans identify as either Christian or religiously unaffiliated, the survey also includes interviews with people of other (non-Christian) religions as well as with some who decline to answer questions about their religious identity. But, in most countries, the survey’s sample sizes do not allow for a detailed analysis of the attitudes of people in this group. Furthermore, this category is composed largely of Muslim respondents, and general population surveys may underrepresent Muslims and other small religious groups in Europe because these minority populations often are distributed differently throughout the country than is the general population; additionally, some members of these groups (especially recent immigrants) do not speak the national language well enough to participate in a survey. As a result, this report does not attempt to characterize the views of religious minorities such as Muslims, Jews, Buddhists or Hindus in Western Europe.

Friday 30 December 2016

Immanuel looking at Jewish and Christian visions

On the 30th of November a "Lastige Vragensteller" or "Troublesome Asker or Inquirer" started placing his questions and responses on WordPress. Questiontime-Vragenuurtje has already touched some controversial subjects. Querrying about this world – Deze wereld bevragend, you may find articles in English as well as in Dutch. In the articles is being looked at writings from Muslim, Christian and Jewish teachers and are those teachings from the different groups compared. Being a site for people from the Muslim community you may think it would not be interesting for Christians; Though they better look at those writing which can shed a light on what is wrong in the teachings of Muslims but also on what is wrong in the teachings of many Christian groups.



A few days later, just before the celebrations of Chanukah, Immanuel Verbondskind started a blog with similar intentions, showing the world where Jews, Christians and eventually also Muslims have different groups who often go wrong in their teachings because they are not keeping to what is really written in what they call their Holy Scriptures.

For the "Tiresome Questioner" and "Immanuel Verbondskind" it should be clear that man has to keep to the Given Word of the Most High Almighty God of gods. Both recognise that this world has many gods but that there is only One True God to Whom all people should come. It is That Almighty Elohim, they say, Who is expecting mankind to come back to Him in a restored relationship.

On both sites shall be looked at religions where their members say that they are monotheists, like the Christians say so, though lots of them worship a Trinity, and as such worshipping three gods.

For both of them it is clear that man may have drifted from the truth because they do not read the Word of God. We have to find it again. It is also the task of lovers of God to show others that Word of God and the Truth. For that reason I also want to invite you to have a look at both new sites and to thing about the material presented over there.

It might well be that you do not belong to a religious groups similar to that one of the writers,but let it not hold you back to enjoy their writing and to react there where you think it is necessary.

Only started on the 23rd of December you may already find following articles

Friday 21 October 2016

Collapse of the proposed compromise over the Kotel

Women of the Wall and liberal Orthodox circles have not let up in their battle to hold prayers at the wall as they wish in the main Western Wall plaza, which is under the auspices of the chief rabbi of the Western Wall, and which a government plan defines as following Orthodox custom.

On Thursday morning a group of women held a prayer service in the women’s section of the main Kotel area. Their attempts to smuggle in a Torah scroll into the area were stopped, and police detained a man who attempted to remove a Torah scroll from the men’s section and hand it to the women on their side of the gender divider.

Read more:

As the government ignores the question of opening the Western Wall to non-Orthodox denominations dozens of Orthodox Jewish worshippers are establishing facts on the ground by holding festive holiday prayer services everyday in the section of the Western Wall, or Kotel, that had been intended for non-Orthodox prayer.
Demonstrative Orthodox services are being held at the Robinson’s Arch compound a few times daily, as a result of a public relations campaign by religious Zionist bodies.
These prayer sessions are perfectly legal and violate no rules, as long as no “local custom” has been established for the new compound.

Wednesday 30 March 2016

Of Kings And Prophets a Biblically-themed network television

On Tuesday, March 8 at 10PM a Biblically-themed network television, called Of Kings And Prophets, debuted on ABC.

Thirty years after Ronald Reagan stated:
 “Religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church because only those humble enough to admit they’re sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.” 
 a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew found it time to join together to do what many in Hollywood deemed impossible: launch a Biblically-themed network television show about the collision of politics and religion that would appeal to both faith-based and secular audiences.

The makers of the show want to be faithful to the Bible and show people the Work of God. They say
In being faithful to the scriptures, we decided not to shy away from the sexuality and violence that is either implied or explicit in the text. To do so, would sanitize the reality of the biblical time and place, while at the same time bypassing important parallels that we still confront and struggle with today. We made this choice to open a conversation about how one reconciles faith with the realities of the world—whether in ancient Israel or in the contemporary U.S.
It seems there has to be some violence shown in the show.
We assumed we might be met with some resistance from Biblical literalists, as there is always the chance when dealing with religious material that faith-based audiences might negatively react to our interpretation of scriptural inconsistencies.
Surprisingly though, the most vitriolic criticism has not come from faith-based viewers, but from secular media outlets and bloggers, many of whom argued that the war, violence and brutality depicted in the show would alienate religious viewers. Clearly, these reviewers are unfamiliar with the Bible.
Today we hear also lots of people criticising the Koran and Muslims because they would keep to all sorts of cruel stories. But those complaining about those violent stories do forget or do not know that those same stories can be found in the Jewish as well as the Christian Bible.

People should be aware that
The world of the Old Testament, as described in the Bible, is often brutal and violent—a world where slavery and rape were the victor’s prerogative, and genocide was an accepted approach to foreign policy. The faithful know this better than anyone.
It are often the kafir or non-believers and those who do not know the religious texts who go in attack against one or the other religion. In Christendom we also have lots of people who have taken Jesus as their god instead of believing what Jesus and God say about each other. Many of those so called Christians do not know the other true Christians, who in Christianity proclaim only One True God, the God of Abraham, like the God of the Jews and the God of Muslims.
Often it our those Christians who keep to a three-headed god do not come to see Who the God is of the Holy Scriptures and do not realise how the whole world shall come to get to know the Only One True God, Allah, the Elohim Hashem Jehovah, Who is One God of gods and Host of hosts, greater than and above all gods.

The makers of the show are devoted to their respective faiths, and passionate about their artistry. They say
That’s why we are convinced that if the entertainment industry fails to show faith-based programming, we will miss out on opportunities to explore and understand the rich values and moral complexities that exist at the heart of our religious texts.
And conclude:
It is our hope that secular critics will understand that it is vital to our fabric as a nation to explore our faith through art—to let our values, morals and faith serve as scaffolding for our creativity. That’s what we have tried to do with Of Kings And Prophets.
But after just two episodes ABC has decided to cancel its biblical drama Of Kings and Prophets.
The move came after the show received low ratings and sponsors were pressured to pull their advertising.
The show attempted to tell the story of King David’s ascent to the throne and King Saul’s demise. While an exciting premise, ABC failed to deliver a product that resonated with most viewers. Of Kings and Prophets downplayed religious themes in favor of sex, violence, and intrigue for entertainment value.
ABC also took plenty of artistic licenses and made some odd character choices. For example, the prophet Samuel was portrayed as a jealous, bloodthirsty, and senile old man who misrepresented the will of Elohim. Samuel ordered Saul to annihilate the Amalekites seemingly out of spite, not because God wanted it.

Tuesday 15 December 2015

25 Orthodox rabbis issued a statement on Christianity

The moral introspection generated by the Holocaust was further stimulated by the campaign of some Jewish intellectuals, notably Jules Isaac, who urged the Catholic Church to undo the “teaching of contempt” that had characterized its approach to Jews through the ages.
However, exclusive attention to this dimension obscures the larger forces transforming the moral and intellectual landscape of the 1960s. The egalitarian impulse that produced the civil rights movement in the United States and de-colonization worldwide did not sit well with traditions of religious exclusivism and triumphalism, let alone the condemnation of the other to discrimination and damnation.

There have been commemorations celebrating the 50th anniversary of the “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to non-Christian Religions” titled “Nostra Aetate,” whose fourth section deals with Judaism and marks a genuinely significant moment.

Jewish reactions were for the most part highly favourable, though various objections were raised that strike me as expressions of hypersensitivity. Thus, the document should have “condemned” anti-Semitism rather than merely “decrying” it; the final version should have retained the term “deicide” in characterizing the offence for which the Jews bear no guilt.

The declaration was seen as too little, too late, and the notion that Jews were being exonerated for crucifying Jesus was seen as at least marginally insulting. Thus, some Jews whose long-standing bill of particulars against the Church featured the guilt that it assigned to the Jewish people for the Crucifixion nonetheless dismissed the historic revocation of this theology as an event that should have no consequences for their own resentful stance.

To implement the new relationship, the Church established a Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, which issued its first official document (“Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate (No.4)”) in 1974. In 1985, it issued “Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church.” And in 1998, it issued a document on the Holocaust titled “We Remember.” Despite occasional formulations that some Jews, rightly or wrongly, found inadequate or objectionable, these documents fleshed out “Nostra Aetate” in a direction that reflected advances achieved by ongoing dialogues and even dealt with some of the specific concerns that Jews had expressed regarding the original declaration.

In “Nostra Aetate” itself, and much more so in subsequent Church documents and papal utterances, the abiding value of Judaism has been affirmed and even emphasized. In theological language, the covenant between God and the original Israel remains in effect. What precisely that covenant is—the Abrahamic and/or the Mosaic—is not quite settled, and some Jews have virtually demanded that Christians declare that the Mosaic covenant remains in full force. I have argued that this demand is unwise. It raises intractable questions about the parameters of the Jewish need to observe that covenant and constitutes a telling example of the inappropriate dictation to others of what their own religion must teach.

> Please do read more about this subject:

Vatican II at 50; Assessing the impact of ‘Nostra Aetate’ on Jewish-Christian relations By David Berger

+++


Tuesday 25 August 2015

Propaganda war and ISIS

English: Map of the Muslim Population by Perce...
Map of the Muslim Population by Percentage in the World (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

All places with connection to Christian culture, like St. Elian's tomb, the monastery around it (Mar Elian Monastery), an ancient structure located just outside a Syrian town captured by the group earlier this month, got bulldozed down.

What began as demonstrations against the nation's Ba'athist president, Bashar al-Assad, has become a complex fight among the Syrian regime; moderate rebels; Kurds; and Islamists, such as al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State. Muslims made use of it to convert people to what they call the true Islam and to go and destroy all 'heathen' monuments.


Places where archaeologists have worked excavating and preserving like the site of Palmyra for 40 years are destroyed for being a witness in later centuries.

The torture and beheading of leading Syrian archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad had to be again one of the many killings to frighten people and to make them choose for ISIS.
Already hundreds of Christian families have fled central Syrian towns as Islamic State fighters advanced toward them. But also Muslims are looking for an escape of the terrorist so called Muslim fanatics. More and more Mohammedan people are daring to speak out that it can not be that those ISIS people would be real Muslims. Problem is that some Muslims are finding ways to accuse Israel of infiltrating and funding groups against Muslim groups so that the Muslim world would be destabilised. Some said to me that they had seen video where when zoomed in could be seen fighters wearing a David star. I myself did not see any proof of that yet and consider it propaganda material which is used to set one group of people up against an other group.

The Druze, a centuries-old Arab community and an offshoot of Shia Islam, is the latest religious minority in the Levant to suffer the wrath of Islamic extremists. Jabhat al-Nusra or the Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliated group fighting the Assad regime in Syria, in June of this year killed nearly two dozen members of the Druze community in Syria’s northern region near the town of Idlib. Nusra, like the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) and other radical Sunni groups, views the Druze, much like the Shia, as “apostate” Muslims that should be killed. Islamic militants have already attacked Shia and Christian communities and their places of worship in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain.
In her thoughtful New York Times Magazine article, “The Shadows of Death,” Eliza Griswold has chronicled the plight of Christians in the Middle East and how attacks by radical Islamic groups have led to the Middle East emptying itself of Christians. This is a sad tale for the Christian community, for other religious minorities, and for the region as a whole. The Druze community in Syria is becoming understandably apprehensive about whether it would face a similar fate.
As the intolerance of religious minorities —Christians, Druze, and Shia— bubbles to the surface, the Sunni majority becomes more regressive. The artistic, cultural, economic, religious, and social diversity, which has been part of the multiethnic and multi-religious mosaic in the Levant and across the region, is rapidly disappearing to be replaced by backwardness and retrogression.

In the mean time those looking for a better place to live in Europe are considered by several Europeans a threat to their Judeo-Christian society with a danger of having Muslims infiltrating our Western culture, plus finding people who do not want to adapt to our Western culture, but making stronger groups of people they fear would become 'parasites' in our economy and having them wanting to have mosques build in our regions.