Visiting Evangelicals Silent on China's Persecuted House Churches

The Institute on Religion & Democracy (IRD) is dismayed at the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA)'s having ignored religious persecution in China during its recent visit. Instead, it spoke only of cooperation with the government-registered church while disregarding restrictions by the communist regime on unofficial churches. The vast majority of Chinese Christians, conservatively estimated at 80 million in number, worship in unregistered congregations that meet in homes and other settings.

In the past week alone, leaders of the Chinese House Church Alliance were detained by the authorities in Hebei province according to China Aid. House churches in both Beijing and Shanghai have also been closed recently by the police. In Shanxi province, authorities demolished the Fushan House Church's building, giving church leaders long prison sentences. In December, a Ugyhur Christian convert from Islam was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for his faith.

In response, IRD's Religious Liberty Program will launch Ten Thursdays of Prayer for China's Church beginning on January 21 in Religious Liberty Program director Faith McDonnell's e-newsletter, Faith on Freedom and on the IRD website. Each Thursday will have a special focus with information from China Aid. McDonnell is asking for aggressive intercessory prayer on behalf of the Church in China.

IRD Religious Liberty Program Director Faith J.H. McDonnell commented:

"We are glad that the WEA was able to minister to and encourage China's officially registered church. But we cannot do service to one part of the Body of Christ at the cost of doing disservice to another.

"One would not be able to discern the presence of any other church in China from the WEA's report. We find it staggering that there was no acknowledgment of the 80 million or more Chinese house church Christians or what they face from the Chinese government.

"Acknowledgment of the Chinese house churches, and of those who are in prison for their faith, is our duty as fellow Christians.

"We see the inability of good intentions and legislation to stop the persecution of Christians around the world. We see what appears to be a juggernaut of policies and politics crushing freedom and democracy. But have we seen the power of God released in these circumstances by faithful and constant prayer? We must get serious about praying for the persecuted church."

Martyr's Heir Takes Office as Bishop

Vincent Nguyen fled Vietnam, where an ancestor was executed for his faith

From National Post (CDN)
By Charles Lewis

Vincent Nguyen's journey 26 years ago from Vietnam to Canada culminated yesterday in the pomp and splendour of his ordination as a bishop (Auxilliary of the Archdiocese of Toronto) of the Roman Catholic Church.

More than 1,000 people crammed the pews of St. Michael's Cathedral to see 43-year-old Father Nguyen become Bishop Nguyen in a ceremony that connects back to St. Peter, the first bishop of Rome.

Bishop Nguyen's friends and fellow clergymen describe him as extremely humble and shy, but his pedigree is the stuff of legend.

He is a fifth-generation Catholic, the great-grandson of a man martyred for his faith in the 19th century. As a child Bishop Nguyen dreamed of being a priest, as a teenager he steered a boat of refugees to escape Vietnam so he could live in freedom, and yesterday he became the youngest bishop in the country and Canada's first non-white Catholic bishop.

"You prepare your whole life to become a priest," Bishop Nguyen said in an interview. "But the call to be a bishop is always a surprise; it's not something you aspire to.

"Becoming a bishop shows the connection to the Holy Father, and to the succession of the apostles. It's very overwhelming to be installed in that whole tradition that goes back 2,000 years. You are being called by God so the whole thing is really a mystery."

When he left Vietnam in a rickety fishing boat with his uncles and a dozen others in 1984, he was a 16-year-old dreaming of one day becoming a Catholic priest. "I saw no future in Vietnam."

The group of refugees faced pirates, rough seas and leaks. At one point he was asked to take the helm, essentially putting the responsibility for his fellow passengers' lives on his shoulders.

"His life experience is not dissimilar to many in our archdiocese who have gone through great suffering," Thomas Collins, Archbishop of the Diocese of Toronto, said in an interview yesterday. "I regularly meet people from many countries facing persecution. People I meet tell me of the suffering of their relatives, people who have died for Christ. They are an inspiration to us."

During yesterday's service, Archbishop Collins called the blood of the martyrs "the seed of the Church." He made reference to Bishop Nguyen being a descendant of a "holy martyr."

Bishop Nguyen's great-great-grandfather, Joseph Can Nguyen, was the first in his family to become a Catholic. When Joseph was 21, he was arrested for being a Christian.

"And he was executed for being a Christian," said Bishop Nguyen. "This incredible story has been passed on in my family. The executioners tied him to a post in the river and waited for the tide to come up. The executioners very patiently would come over once in a while to see if he wanted to recant. His answer was consistently no and so he drowned. The emperor was afraid of these Christians who would not worship him.

"Sometimes I jokingly tell people that I'm tired of this story. When we would do something wrong, they told us behave as a descendant of a martyr. It's a kind of pressure, but as we grow up we more appreciate the faith of our ancestors passed on to us with their own lives."

Revealed: Top Commentator on Health Bill Under $400K White House Contract

More of the Chicago style of government. The "expert" opinions you hear on the news shows may be paid for by - well, you!

From LifeSiteNews
By Kathleen Gilbert

An expert economist who has commented influentially in favor of President Obama's health care overhaul in major publications, touting the bill's purported cost-saving effects, has been under a $400,000 contract to model those effects for the Obama administration - unbeknownst to many in the journalistic sphere.

Politico reported Friday that MIT Economist Jon Gruber failed to disclose the fiscal relationship, most of which was established last June, while he offered commentary on the health bill to newspapers and magazines - including Politico.

"I'm an ivory tower guy at heart and do my thing and figure I'm an honest guy and people will trust it," Gruber told Politico when confronted with the issue. He pointed out that he had disclosed his contract with the Department of Health and Human Services in the New England Journal of Medicine's (NEJM) formal disclosure process.

Yet, Politico's Ben Smith said that "the disclosure does not appear in any number of other places: beside his quotations in newspapers and magazines supporting the plan, including a Ron Brownstein piece the White House pushed hard; under a recent Washington Post op-ed; and beside crucial statements, such as his dismissal of an insurance industry study, which was part of a successful administration fight to discredit the study."

While supporters say the health care overhaul will ultimately cut the national deficit, the claim has come under intense fire from lawmakers and commentators who say such numbers are drastically inaccurate, and mask the danger of a bill some analysts say will increase government spending by $2.3 trillion.

In Brownstein's November piece, Gruber hailed the cost-saving measures in the Senate health care bill, saying that Democrats "really make the best effort anyone has ever made." "Everything is in here. ... I can't think of anything I'd do that they are not doing in the bill. You couldn't have done better than they are doing," he said. Gruber was referred to in the piece as "a leading health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is consulted by politicians in both parties."

In his December Washington Post op-ed, Gruber defended the highly controversial "Cadillac tax" exised on high-cost health plans, claiming it "doesn't walk like a tax or talk like a tax - because it is not a tax. It is an innovative way of financing the health reform we so desperately need." Critics say the Cadillac tax, which Democrats hope will help foot the cost of the bill, would place too heavy a burden on middle class workers in its current Senate bill form.

Smith also reports that, when Washington Post op-ed editor Autumn Brewington asked Gruber as part of routine disclosure protocol whether he "received any funding, for research or otherwise, from organizations or persons identified in the column," Gruber answered "no."

Brewington nonetheless defended the column, saying that "the subject of the op-ed was not related to Gruber's work for the administration, and we accepted the column based on the body of his work and knowledge in this field."

Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic defended Gruber's integrity, and said he was aware of the relationship, but noted that "other journalists writing on health care were not aware that Gruber was doing projections for the administration." "Obviously this was not as widely known as I thought," he wrote.

Liberal blogger Marcy Wheeler said the question of whether Gruber actually believed what he preached "wasn't the point,” and questioned why Gruber only disclosed the contract to the NEJM - the one publication that might have otherwise negatively impacted his professional reputation.

"So, nine months after he first gets a contract with HHS, he starts disclosing the relationship, and only to the organization that [could have] totally discredit[ed] him professionally, not to those that will more directly affect the health care debate?" Wheeler wrote.

Rembrandt Work Discovered in Closet at Catholic University in Washington

From Catholic World News

An etching that was discovered last year in the cabinet of a bathroom on the campus of Catholic University in Washington, DC, has been confirmed as the work of Rembrandt. Father David O’Connell, the outgoing president of Catholic University, discovered the work while he was looking for paper towels.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Rembrandt etching hidden in DC university bathroom now featured in new exhibit (AP)

Churchill's Parrot: "High Marx for Mr. Obama"

Our friends at Churchill's Parrot are champions of the "Churchillian Spirit" and embody the great man's wit and insight. We think the following post is a particularly apt summary of America's current regime.

Click on graph for larger view

“We are just five days away from fundamentally transforming America!”

- President Barack Obama, October 31, 2008

--------------------------------------

In his recent tête-à-tête with Oprah Winfrey (the original BIG O), President Barack Obama awarded himself the grade of B+ for his performance after nearly a year in office. Naturally, those on the Right disagree and award Barry an F. Somewhat surprisingly, those to the Left are not much more generous in their assessment.

We submit, however, that would-be graders, both right and left, are applying the wrong standard in grading Mr. Obama. This is understandable. For 220 years, presidents of The United States have performed, more or less, according to a common motivation: to win re-election and their place in history by leaving the nation more prosperous, powerful, and peaceful than it was when they assumed office. Many have failed in this regard, of course, but this was due to incompetence. Certainly were Barack Obama performing according to this same motivation he should be given a grade of F. The country is far less prosperous, increasingly less powerful, and in danger of becoming much less peaceful at this point in his tenure.

But Barack Obama does not share the same motivations as his predecessors and he is not incompetent. He is a radical Marxist who understands well that in order to successfully transform a free market republic he must first facilitate the collapse of its existing socio-economic order. And by this standard, it is our contention, Barry is doing an outstanding job.

He has accelerated the debauchment of American currency; he has committed Her to irrecoverable debt; he has impaired Her free markets with myriad regulation; he has handicapped Her military with impossible rules of engagement; he has befuddled and demoralized Her intelligence gathering operations; he has made Her economy vastly more dependent upon federal whim; and he has signaled to the world that he will not defend Her interest so much as negotiate them away.

Why? Does Barack Obama hate America? No. He possesses, however, a radically different idea of what America is supposed to be. His is the Jeremiah Wright-Bill Ayers-Howard Zinn-Saul Alinsky-Richard Cloward-Frances Fox Piven vision of America: a nation that has grown too rich and too powerful and done so primarily through the exploitation of the disadvantaged and the extortion of the powerless. In the name of justice, therefore, such a polity must be made to pay restitution, to make amends, to be humbled by any means necessary, so that it cannot and will not abuse its fellow nations and citizens of the world ever again.

It is descriptive, not pejorative, to identify this mindset and worldview as Marxist, for indeed Marx’s fundamental assertion was that the so-called free market thrives only through the exploitation of the worker and is thus, at its core, evil. In his mind, therefore, Mr. Obama is doing what is right, just, and necessary in making a shambles of the American socio-economic order. And in this he is doing a right bang-up job! We refer you to the chart illustrated above from a liberal professor of economics at a major Midwestern University.

Americans must understand that this is not incompetence, it is a promise kept: the fundamental transformation of America, Phase One. The sooner the majority realizes this, the more vehemently they will – we continue to hope – actively reject it.

Google, Citing Cyber Attack, Threatens to Exit China

From The New York Times
By Miguel Helft and John Markoff

Google threatened late Tuesday to pull out of its operations in China after it said it had uncovered a massive cyber attack on its computers that originated there.

As a result, the company said, it would no longer agree to censor its search engine in China and may exit the country altogether.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Scott Brown: "It's the People's Seat"

Scott Brown at the Massachusetts Senate debate. "With all due respect, it's not the Kennedy's seat, it's not the Democrats' seat, it's the people's seat."