| Open Doors USA WASHINGTON — Leading Christian persecution watchdog nongovernmental organization Open Doors USA released it’s 2020 World Watch List Wednesday, an influential annual data report that this year highlights a drastic increase in attacks against Christian buildings and the imprisonment of Christians. The report, first launched in 1992, ranks the worst 50 countries in the world when it comes to the persecution of Christians and is based on data compiled by Open Doors’ operations in 60 countries. This year’s list names a number of repeat offenders such as North Korea, China, Iran, Somalia, and Eritrea as well as new countries where radical Islamic extremism wreaked havoc on Christian communities in 2019. The report finds that about 260 million Christians experience “high levels of persecution” in the top 50 countries on the list, an increase of about 6 percent from the 2019 report . The report also states that 9,488 “churches or Christian buildings” — or an average of 25 per day — were attacked during the 2019 reporting period (Nov. 1, 2018, to Oct. 31, 2019). By comparison, Open Doors noted in last year’s report that 1,266 churches or Christian buildings were attacked. Also, the number of Christians detained without trial, arrested and imprisoned increased from 2,625 in the 2019 report to 3,711 in the 2020 report. The 2020 report, however, indicates a decrease in the number of Christians killed for their faith. At least 2,983 Christians were killed for faith-related reasons during the last reporting period. That is an average of eight Christians killed per day. By comparison, an average of 11 Christians was killed per day (4,136) during Open Doors’ 2018 reporting period. Code for blog Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable. For example, 5 euros a month is it a lot or little? A cup of coffee? It is not that much for a family budget, but it is a significant amount for Pravmir. If everyone reading Pravmir could donate 5 euros a month, they would contribute greatly to our ability to spread the word of Christ, Orthodoxy, life " s purpose, family and society. Also by this author Today " s Articles Most viewed articles Functionality is temporarily unavailable. Most popular authors Functionality is temporarily unavailable. © 2008-2024 Pravmir.com |
| Three-Fourths of Russian Residents Believe that Russia Needs Orthodoxy Moscow, July 29, 2014 On July 28 the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates the feast-day of Holy Prince Vladimir, Equal-to-the-Apostles, who baptized Russia in 988. Since June 1, 2010, by order of Dmitry Medvedev, the then President of the Russian Federation, July 28 has been officially celebrated as the Day of the Baptism of Russia. The Sreda Sociological Service provides information on the opinion of Russian citizens about the necessity of Orthodoxy for the country: In the course of the survey 74% of Russian citizens agreed with the statement: “Russia needs Orthodoxy” (31% completely agree and 43% rather agree). 7% disagree with this statement (4% completely disagree and 3% rather disagree), and the other 19% agree in certain aspects and disagree in other aspects. Notably, no respondents refused to answer this question. Orthodox Christians belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church mostly completely agree with the statement that Orthodoxy is necessary for Russia (47% among Orthodox believers completely agree and 31% throughout Russia on the whole). Also residents of the Central Federal District (43%), Muscovites(41%), and residents of cities with population of over one million (40%) mostly completely agree. The largest percentage of respondents who completely disagree with the statement is among non-believers (9% of non-believers and 3% all over Russia on average). While the percentage of men who absolutely disagree with the statement or rather disagree (altogether 10%), or doubt (23%), is above average, the percentage of women who completely support or rather support the statement is, on the contrary, above average (altogether 80%). Age and education have no effect on the replies of the respondents, only the group of Russian residents with special secondary education has more people who disagree (here and hereafter the percentage of those who agree or disagree with the given statement within the stated group is cited in parentheses) that Orthodoxy is necessary (9%). As for occupations, leaders deny the statement more often (13%) while unemployed pensioners accept it (81%) more often. |
| The lengths of the canonical gospels suggest not only intention to publish but also the nature of their genre. 68 All four gospels fit the medium-range length (10,000–25,000 words) found in ancient biographies as distinct from many other kinds of works. 69 A «book» was approximately what one could listen to in a setting. The average length of a book of Herodotus or Thucydides is about 20,000 words, which would take around two hours to read. After the Alexandrian library reforms, an average 30–35 feet scroll would contain 10,000 to 25,000 words–exactly the range into which both the Gospels and many ancient bioi fal1. 70 Also seeking popular analogies, Moses Hadas and Morton Smith compared the Gospels with aretalogies. 71 Aretalogies do have some features in common with some Gospel narratives, but they are normally brief narrations or lists of divine acts, hence do not provide the best analogies for the Gospels as whole works. 72 These narratives may support the hypothesis of early circulated miracle-collections (such as Johns proposed signs source), and indicate the degree to which narratives could be employed in the service of religious propaganda. They do not, however, explain our current gospels and their length; aretalogy was not even a clearly defined genre. 73 2. Novels and Drama Not all literary works concerning specific characters were biographies. Yet all four canonical gospels are a far cry from the fanciful metamorphosis stories, divine rapes, and so forth in a compilation like Ovid " s Metamorphoses. The Gospels plainly have more historical intention and fewer literary pretensions than such works. The primary literary alternative to viewing the Gospels as biography, however, is not entertaining mythological anthologies but to view them as intentional fiction, 74 a suggestion that has little to commend it. First-century readers recognized the genre of novel (the Hellenistic «romance»), 75 including novels about historical characters, 76 but ancient writers normally distinguished between fictitious and historical narratives. 77 As some literary critics have noted, even when historical works have incorrect facts they do not become fiction, and a novel that depends on historical information does not become history. 78 Talbert argues that not all biographies were basically reliable like Suetonius and Plutarch; but his examples of unreliable biographies, Pseudo Callisthenes» Alexander Romance and Lucian " s Passing of Peregrinus, do not make his case. 79 The former is more like a historical novel, and the latter resembles satire. This is not to deny some degree of overlap among categories in historical content, but to affirm that what distinguishes the two genres is the nature of their truth claims. 80 |
| These trends are obvious, but there are some less noticeable developments that are just as significant. Along with the continued decline of the Christian population in Europe and North America, there is an explosive expansion of the Catholic and Protestant population of South America, Africa and Asia. In the generations to come the average citizen of Christendom will be darker-skinned, poor or of the lower middle-class. And what is more important, this average Christian will have little historic allegiance to European or Russian culture.. As a result, Europe and the West will become mostly non-Christian, while the Christian population will largely be made up of Hispanics, Africans and Asians. Western society continues to become more reliant upon technology for daily life. The modern culture, in its addiction to false images and entertainment, has become " disengaged " from the original design for human life. As a result, our young person will becoming " less-connected " with other people and with their natural world. He is becoming, in the terminology of the Holy Fathers, increasingly " insensitive " to the beauties and truth of God " s Creation. Society continues to push religion - especially the Holy Orthodoxy - out of the public square and into the backstreet alleys. Religious belief has been demoted to the status of " private opinion " . Ethics and morality have become matters of personal taste, instead of reflecting the eternal constants of truth and goodness. Society continues to ignore the moral witness of the Church, and has adopted only one simple value: the materialistic satisfaction of people who can speak for themselves. This means that society will increase in moral permissiveness. It will be liberation for those who have power and wealth. But those who are poor, or who cannot speak for themselves - they will be the ones who will have lows heaped upon them, and will lose their right even to live. You may be asking yourself what these trends have to do with the Holy Orthodox Church, this Diocese or our families. We are even now seeing the effects of these trends in our parishes. By the time our young people reach adulthood, there will be no doubt about the reality of these developments: |
| JERUSALEM (Ma " an) -- Orthodox Archbishop Atallah Hanna condemned Israeli authorities on Thursday for imposing obstacles on Christians wishing to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to celebrate the upcoming Christian holiday of Easter. “It is the right of every Christian to reach the Church of the Holy Sepulchre without facing any obstacles, or impediments,” Hanna said in a statement. “The Israeli security pretexts are unacceptable in every way,” he added, calling on Orthodox and Christian institutions to facilitate the entrance of Christians to the holy sites. “We call on our sons, churches and followers to head to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and hold on to this religious and national right and refuse the status quo imposed by the occupation authorities,” the archbishop said. Hanna’s statements come days after Palestinian Christian groups in Jerusalem denounced Israeli restrictions on their right to worship in the city, calling for an end to discrimination against both Christians and Muslims in the holy city. “The restrictive measures constitute grave violation on the freedom of worship, and amount to discrimination against Christians because the occupation authorities want to negate Christian presence and create the impression of a Jewish-only city,” the statement signed “Palestinian Christian Organizations in Occupied East Jerusalem” read. Both Christians and Muslims are often “unable to worship freely and to be with their families and friends” during religious holidays because of Israel’s actions, the statement added. Jerusalem was the scene of violence last Easter, as Israeli forces erected checkpoints around the Holy City and assaulted pilgrims as they crowded in the area. A statement signed by signed by the heads of all recognized churches in the Holy Land later denounced the “awful scenes of the brutal treatment to clerics, average people and pilgrims in Jerusalem during Holy Saturday,” lamenting that clergymen and average people “get beaten brutally and indiscriminately and be denied access to their churches under the pretext of keeping order.” |
| Marriage and Possible Alternativees: The Pursuit of Wholeness and Holiness A few decades ago the term " open marriage " entered our vocabulary. We also learned about " prenups, " i.e., marriage qualified in various ways by formal prenuptial agreements. These days we barely blink when we hear about couples living together or when we encounter marital breakdown ending divorce – divorce often followed by remarriage and (then even more frequently) by another divorce. (A frightening statistic: At this point the average length of a marriage in the United States is five years.) If TV ratings and star salaries offer any indication, we as a society see nothing amiss in sex and marriage as these are presented on Friends, where sex has become a recreational activity and marriage a running joke. No apology is needed for the theme of this year’s Institute: “Does Christian Marriage Have a Future?” Practically daily we hear in the media how “traditional” concepts and definitions of marriage are being challenged. In the first few months of 2004 the focus has been on same-sex marriage – now legal in Massachusetts, among other places, and gaining vocal support in many quarters, Christian churches included. But the challenge to “traditional” concepts and definitions of marriage is not limited to this latest headline getter. A few decades ago the term “open marriage” entered our vocabulary. We also learned about “prenups,” i.e., marriage qualified in various ways by formal prenuptial agreements. These days we barely blink when we hear about couples living together or when we encounter marital breakdown ending divorce – divorce often followed by remarriage and (then even more frequently) by another divorce. (A frightening statistic: At this point the average length of a marriage in the United States is five years.) If TV ratings and star salaries offer any indication, we as a society see nothing amiss in sex and marriage as these are presented on Friends , where sex has become a recreational activity and marriage a running joke. |
| Anti-Christian Violence, Attacks on Churches in Europe at All-Time High in 2019: Report Source: The Christian Post Desecrated altar of St. Alain Church in France. Photo: Francebleu.fr Attacks against Christians in Europe reached record highs in 2019, as hostility and vandalism against churches, Christian schools and monuments sweep the continent. Earlier this month, the Gatestone Institute International Policy Council published its research of anti-Christian violence after having reviewed hundreds news reports, parliamentary inquiries, and police blotters, and found that approximately 3,000 acts of vandalism, looting and defacement occurred last year, incidents routinely obscured by the media. “Violence against Christian sites is most widespread in France, where churches, schools, cemeteries and monuments are being vandalized, desecrated and burned at an average rate of three per day, according to government statistics. In Germany, attacks against Christian churches are occurring at an average rate of two per day, according to police blotters,” the group documented in a Jan. 1 report. Those committing the crimes are rarely apprehended and the information about their identities are covered up by police and journalists, the group asserts. Because many suspects are said to have mental disorders, the acts of vandalism, though demonstrably anti-Christian, are not formally classified as “hate crimes.” The hostile acts that have been documented include instances of arson, defecation, desecration, looting, mockery, profanation, satanism, theft, urination and vandalism, and often the perpetrators are never caught. Code for blog Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable. For example, 5 euros a month is it a lot or little? A cup of coffee? It is not that much for a family budget, but it is a significant amount for Pravmir. If everyone reading Pravmir could donate 5 euros a month, they would contribute greatly to our ability to spread the word of Christ, Orthodoxy, life " s purpose, family and society. Also by this author Today " s Articles Most viewed articles Functionality is temporarily unavailable. Most popular authors Functionality is temporarily unavailable. © 2008-2024 Pravmir.com |
| Thus some scholars have even compared them with a typical «retainer» class. 1520 With the demise of the leading priests in Jerusalem during the Jewish revolt, the Pharisees were well-positioned to have their interests represented in a new coalition of power. The increasing power of some Pharisees after 70 would thus not be surprising. Yavneh was one of the Judean cities controlled by the Herodian family with Romés approval, 1521 and there Vespasian settled Judeans willing to submit to Rome, who would have included many aristocrats with vested interests. 1522 Some argue that the leading citizens among those settled there were especially Pharisees; 1523 others suggest that the leaders were scribes in general, including but not limited to Pharisees. 1524 In any case, many of the leaders (such as Gamaliel and Eliezer ben Hyrcanus) were Pharisees–which fits the otherwise probably inexplicable portrait of their role in a hostile Judean leadership in the Fourth Gospe1. The Pharisees and Jewish Christians probably had a more amicable relationship in the sixties, 1525 but some factors surrounding the Judean revolt–perhaps the need to consolidate influence afterwards, perhaps the social class or just idiosyncrasies of Yavnehs surviving elite–seem to have changed the relationship to what appears presupposed in Matthew and John. 1526 That the rabbis spoke and wrote with authority does not indicate that everyone observed or even understood their legal rulings, even where they were accepted as experts; 1527 they achieved only gradually the status they held by medieval times. 1528 As late as the fourth century, archaeological evidence shows that observant Palestinian Judaism did not abide by rabbinic norms, 1529 although the same evidence shows that popular legal practice and rabbinic opinion often coincided, perhaps because rabbinic opinion often reflected existing legal traditions. 1530 Because they became the «winners» in subsequent Jewish history, however, their perspective has often been read as normative. 1531 Of course, the average Jewish Palestinian peasant, while influenced by more educated classes, was probably influenced more by the popular trends of the culture than by rabbinic rulings. This need not mean that the rabbis were disrespected, but that untrained people then, like most people today, were eclectic and synergistic; sharing a common basis of morality, popular ideology, and popular stories in folk religion, they may have been no more skilled in the intricacies of rabbinic disputes than the average U.S. citizen is in the details of U.S. case law. Roman legal scholars were likewise heeded at times–and usually ignored. 1532 Especially before the abortive Bar Kokhba revolt, apocalyptic ideas must have flourished on the popular level as in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Such ideas probably influenced revolutionaries like the Zealots, though Josephus " s Hellenistic apologetic excludes such ideas from mention. |
| —Fortunately, in the ROCOR Diocese in the British Isles, which has existed for 85 years, we all have our own churches, but in most of the smaller, newly-established communities and parishes of the newer Sourozh Diocese of the Church inside Russia they have to use and rent Anglican and Catholic premises on Sunday mornings. Many of these communities are tiny—sometimes only ten people attend. Iconostasis of the Church of St. John of Shanghai. —Father Andrew, do you see any noticeable increase in the number of practising Orthodox Christians in England? Have many native English people become Orthodox lately? According to the statistics, Orthodoxy is one of the fastest-growing religions in Western Europe. Yes, we are growing—but by immigration, especially from Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltics, which are all in the EU. If all the local Orthodox came to church, then we would have thousands of parishioners. Unfortunately, fewer than 10 percent of Orthodox actually come to church. As regards Western people who come to Orthodoxy, regardless of nationality, their numbers have always been very small ever since English people began joining the Orthodox Church, basically in the 1950s. On average in our parish we receive one English person a year into the Church. I would say that over the last fifty years on average 50-100 English people a year have joined the different dioceses of the Orthodox Church throughout the country. This is very small numbers. Over 50 years this makes only 2,500 - 5,000 people in all. The situation is very similar in other Western countries—only small numbers come to Orthodoxy. Western people find it very difficult to put our Orthodoxy above Western culture with its rationalism and humanism. In any case, the most important question that we have to ask is not how many Western people join the Orthodox Church, but how many remain in the Church and do not fall away. Some jurisdictions receive many English people, but they nearly all fall away. In ROCOR we are careful about whom we receive and prepare them cautiously. Quality, not quantity. |
| One third of Russians give up drinking Moscow, April 9, 2013 According to research carried out by the World Health Organization, Russians are in reality far from being the greatest lovers of alcohol in the world, in spite of existing stereotypes about them, reports the Sdelano u nas website. Thus, in the 2012 report devoted to health care issues in Europe, it was stated that Moldova was recognized as the heaviest drinking country. On average, each Moldovan drinks over 20 litres of alcohol per year. Luxembourg comes second and Estonia closes the top three. But it is noteworthy that Russia is in the middle of this list—in the twentieth place. It appears that Russian citizens, on average, consume just over 10 liters per year. Approximately the same amount is consumed annually by citizens of Denmark, Great Britain and Croatia. Turkey and Tajikistan were mentioned among the countries that drank the least. Also, little alcohol is consumed in Scandinavian countries—Sweden, Norway and Iceland. And the Russian president Vladimir Putin is himself an example for imitation. The head of state allegedly hardly drinks at all. The Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is indifferent to alcohol as well. On State visits he is usually seen with a glass of mineral water or, very seldom, with a glass of white wine. At present the Russian authorities are engaged in a serious campaign against the excessive consumption of alcohol. Thus, the sale of alcoholic drinks has been banned at night while a ‘ " zero per thousand " standard has been introduced for motorists. Now the deputies of the State Duma are discussing introducing a ban on the consumption of strong drinks on airplanes. These measures are already beginning to bear fruit. According to World Health Organization " s information, the number of Russians who drink several times a week has declined to 5%. Also, the number who drink several times a month has declined to 33%. It may now boldly be said that for Russians sobriety has become the norm. Pravoslavie.ru 10 апреля 2013 г. ... Комментарии Мы в соцсетях Подпишитесь на нашу рассылку |
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