News Alert

The People, UK, 11/12/06 [Excerpts]: Under an astonishing loophole in British law, Muslims who settle here with up to four wives are entitled to a raft of benefits.

If the wives married in a country where polygamy is legal, they can all hit the UK taxpayer for jobseeker's allowance, housing benefit and council tax relief. And if these harems have children they can also claim child benefit and family tax credits. The exhausted husband also gets a jobseeker's allowance of £90.10 a week for himself and his first wife. Extra wives get £32.65 each.

Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton was unaware of the bizarre system until The People began investigating. There are believed to be hundreds of harems in Britain. Polygamy is common across the Middle East and Africa. Welfare minister Philip Hunt admitted: "British law recognises those marriages. Income-related benefits can be paid for more than one wife."

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ChristianityToday.com, Nov 2006: Into the Silent Land:A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation, [Excerpts]-The bright evangelical mind-always so active and in pursuit-must leap great hurdles of spiritual and intellectual activity to shut itself down and be still. Theologian Martin Laird offers a roadmap to this practice of silence and God-awareness with warmth and reason.

Like many trained in Christian contemplative practice, Laird is a Roman Catholic, of the Order of St. Augustine-those charged by Pope John Paul II to be "teachers of the interior life." Laird, an associate professor in theology and religious studies at Villanova University, obeys the charge with grace and clear instruction.

In his compact primer, he charts the path leading to silent surrender and "watchfulness" before God. As such, the book's great contribution might be its reminder that in our noisy, chaotic, thinking world, God is not somebody we need to flag down or acquire: "God is the ground of our being."

Laird's book defines how to sink back into God's ground-physically with breathing, mentally with "prayer words," and spiritually with interior surrender. Through anecdote, Scripture, and classic wisdom, Laird illuminates a Christian path into the silent land. An able guide, he makes the trip more than worth the journey.

[TBC: More aptly named Apostate Christianity Today, this once-evangelical magazine continues to promote Roman Catholicism, as well as a myriad of other heresies (and heretics!) that are leading Christians away from the Scriptures.]