NewsWatch

Mormons Appealing To Millennials And Gen Z

ReligiousNewsService.com, 6/18/19, “20 changes the new Mormon president has made to appeal to Millennials and Generation Z” [Excerpts]: Ever since Russell M. Nelson took office in January of 2018, the changes have been coming fast and furious, and most of them are quite Millennial-friendly. Here [are some] changes:

• Church meetings are shortened to two hours each Sunday, down from three

• Missionaries can call home weekly instead of twice a year

• Women missionaries can (finally) wear pants in most situations

• Service missions are available for some young people instead of proselytizing missions

• There are expanded opportunities for online teaching as a nod to a digital generation

• There has been a profound emphasis on interfaith outreach and cooperation from top LDS authorities

• “Saints” publication presents a more honest version of LDS history

Taken all together....LDS leaders are stepping up their game to make the Church more palatable to younger Saints without watering down its core doctrines. 

(http://bit.ly/32Gtqsw)

‘Islamophobia’ Expert: Christianity Oppressive

FrontPageMag.com, 6/25/19, “‘Islamophobia’ Expert: Christianity ‘An Oppressive Political System [Excerpts]: He could have become something worthwhile like a clerk at 7-Eleven or a sanitation worker, but instead, Todd Green is “associate professor of religion at Luther College and a former advisor on Islamophobia at the U.S. State Department.” And now, in a new article for the Muslim online publication AltMuslimah, he is helpfully sounding the alarm about the dangers of a violent, aggressive, authoritarian religious faith: Christianity.

Imagine wasting your life being an expert on “Islamophobia,” a propaganda term coined to intimidate people into thinking it wrong to oppose jihad terror. In his article, provocatively entitled “When Christianity is not a religion,” he details some cases of what he claims is “Islamophobia” and concludes: “This framing of Islam as more of a nefarious political ideology than a religion is also a staple in the repertoire of the Islamophobia industry. Anti-Muslim hate speakers insist that Islam is not ‘just’ a religion but ‘a political system that is authoritarian, supremacist, discriminatory, expansionist, violent, and aggressive.’”

Notice here that he offers not a single shred of evidence to establish that Islam is not “a political system that is authoritarian, supremacist, discriminatory, expansionist, violent, and aggressive.” In Todd Green’s world, he doesn’t have to prove this false. He just has to present it, and his hapless readers will take it as self-evidently false, because it violates their mythology, the propaganda they have been fed for so many years.

(http://bit.ly/2Sxtq9E)

Christian School/Founder’s Home Destroyed

MorningStarNews.org, 6/6/19, “Officials Destroy Christian School, Hostel—and Founder’s Home—in Eastern India” [Excerpts]: Authorities seized 12 tearful, fatherless children from a Christian ministry in eastern India last month after local officials demolished the ministry’s school and hostel, sources said.

After Hindu extremists persuaded the district collector to demolish the hostel and school serving 250 students, child protection personnel and police on May 21 seized the six orphans and six other children whose fathers were killed by communist guerrillas known as Naxalites, said Vijay Kumar Pusuru, who founded the school near the village of Lichapeta in Odisha state.

Previously local officials have demanded money from other Christians, according to area Christians. “The children wept bitterly and pleaded, not wanting to depart,” Pusuru [said]. “They caught hold of branches and trees. But ruthlessly they were snatched and taken away.”

The 44-year-old Pusuru said the school, about 40 miles south of Malkangiri in the forests of Malkangiri District, is the only one in a radius of 62 miles (100 kilometers) providing English-language education.

The district collector sent 50 people to demolish the school and hostel, which housed 100 children, along with Pusuru’s house, after a local leader of the Hindu extremist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) began to spread misinformation about him and the school.

(http://bit.ly/2Z6gMAW