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Resources on believers' baptism
A rain-filled mikveh (ritual immersion pool) at Korazim National Park, Israel. Photo © 2023 by Michael D. Bates, all rights reserved. Here are a couple of useful resources that I recently encountered, one very old, one new, in support of the view that Christian baptism is for those only...
Hostile reaction to DOJ religious liberty task force
Today Attorney General Jeff Sessions held a press conference announcing the Justice Department's religious liberty task force. The summary of Sessions's statement provided on Good Morning America's Facebook page did not seem at all alarming -- in fact it seemed welcome and overdue: Sessions says the task force will "help...
Abolishing legal recognition of marriage is a bad idea
Scott Ott, the artist formerly known as Scrappleface, is an evangelical Christian and a writer for PJMedia. He has joined the chorus of too-clever-by-half folks who say the way to deal with societal disagreement over the nature and purpose of marriage is to abolish state recognition of marriage. Liberty-loving people,...
Resist the social media mob
In recent years, social media has facilitated the rapid spread of outrage. A few representative cases: Deborah Brown Elementary School being bullied into modifying its dress code rules for hair. Demands to remove the Confederate flag, Confederate memorials, or monuments to historical figures. The hounding of Brendan Eich from his...
100 years ago: Ottoman Muslims begin purge of Christians
Yet another grim commemoration. Stella Morabito, granddaughter of survivors, writes in The Federalist: What You Should Know about the Armenian Genocide. April 24 marks the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, a massive tragedy that brutally snuffed out the lives of up to 1.5 million Armenian Christians in the Ottoman Empire....
"Any society has to privilege some ethical viewpoint"
The headline quote is from the Grauniad*, the left-wing British newspaper, from an editorial pooh-poohing concerns about the marginalization of Christians in the officially Christian United Kingdom. Here's the context (emphasis added): They claim then that it would violate their consciences to do or say certain things which society as...
A bidding prayer for Christmas, A.D. 2014
Edited from the version originally published on December 25, 2012 Merry Christmas to anyone who happens by BatesLine today. As a Holland Hall high school student, I attended and sang in the annual service of Christmas lessons and carols at Trinity Episcopal Church, modeled after the annual Christmas Eve service...
Alton Nolen DOC record matches Jah'Keem Yisrael Facebook tattoo photos
Tattoo photos in the Facebook profile of someone calling himself Jah'Keem Yisrael matches tattoos named in the Department of Corrections record of Alton Alexander Nolen, the man eyewitnesses say beheaded a worker at a food processing plant in Moore, Oklahoma, on Thursday. A number of websites uncovered the profile and...
Richard Wurmbrand books for $1 each on the Kindle
Richard Wurmbrand, who was tortured and imprisoned for preaching the Gospel in Romania, was the founder of Voice of the Martyrs, the Bartlesville-based organization that seeks to call the attention of Christians in the west to our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world. Thirteen of Wurmbrand's books, including Tortured...
Christmas dissent
Brian Ervin, former reporter (and a darned good one) for Urban Tulsa Weekly, has started a blog called TheThirdHelix.com, and his first entry asks some tough questions of his fellow Christians about Christmas: Jesus said, "Anyone who loves their father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me;...
At Christmas, remember the persecuted church
As kids send emails to Santa, as we update our own online wish lists and peruse the lists of our loved ones, Bartlesville-based ministry Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) is asking Christians to include on their gift lists their brothers and sisters in Christ who are suffering persecution. By persecution,...
Pray for China, May 12 through June 4
More than 80 Chinese Christian leaders, most of them involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest movement, released a statement today calling for "forgiveness, repentance, truth, justice, and reconciliation." They call upon all Chinese Christian churches, in China and overseas, "to pray between May 12 - the anniversary of the...
Remember the persecuted church
This morning, Christians will gather in freedom across America and throughout the western world to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, His victory over death. Although our faith is the object of ridicule and contempt, none of us in the west need fear arrest, imprisonment, or torture because of our faith....
Election day links
Tune in tonight to News Talk 740 KRMG starting at 6 to hear my analysis of the precinct-by-precinct results as they come it from across Tulsa County. Bloggers from coast to coast (and beyond) are writing about the election. Let's begin with a prayer for the day and for the...
Ethnic American Advisory Council should reflect ethnic diversity, Reynolds says
State Rep. Mike Reynolds is putting the focus in the recent Centennial Koran uproar where it belongs: Why did Gov. Brad Henry create a state agency devoted promoting the interests of the Muslim religion, and why does it exist under a misleading name? I refer, of course, to the Governor's...
Are copy editors necessary?
Still catching up from various travels and other family events, I noticed I hadn't gotten around to linking my current Urban Tulsa Weekly column or the one from last week. Last week's column dealt with specifics of the proposed $277 million county sales tax increase to fund low-water dams and...
A blogroll snapshot
I am going to be pruning my blogroll over the next few weeks -- checking in with sites I don't visit as often nowadays, removing links to dead and zombie blogs, and synchronizing my blogroll with my Newsgator page. The plan is to take 10 at a time in the...
Faces of persecution
I've been listening to David Calhoun's lectures on Ancient and Medieval Christianity, and the third lecture is about the persecutions of Christians in the Roman Empire. Christians were sent to their deaths for refusing to deny their faith in Christ, for refusing to offer incense or bow to an image...
"Some Afghan way to short-circuit the case"
Here's an interesting idea from National Review's editorial about the situation of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan citizen who has been charged with a capital crime for converting from Islam to Christianity. It is important that, while we push for justice in the case, we don’t play into the hands of...
Afghan Christian faces death for abandoning Islam
I'll let others wrangle over the implications of this for American foreign policy. For now, what matters is that a brother in Christ named Abdur Rahman is under arrest in Afghanistan for converting from Islam to Christianity. If he refuses to deny Christ and turn back to Islam, the prosecutor...
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