How I became Christian again: my long journey to find faith once more

From The Guardian-

A few mornings a week, I go running with a priest.

We meet at 5.30 under a streetlamp in central Austin and make our way down to the state capitol building and back, a distance of about eight miles. It’s a routine we started nearly two years ago, and it came during a pivotal point in my life.

I was 40 years old, the father of three small children, and beginning to wrestle with some of the bigger questions that loom at middle age, particularly about faith.

After growing up in the church and leaving for many years – even abandoning my beliefs at one point while covering war – I was contemplating a return. On a visit to my parents, my children had inadvertently exposed a void that I’d been trying to ignore. My three-year-old daughter asked my mother, “What is God?” only to have her brother reply: “Don’t you know, silly? God is Harvey.”

Harvey is what we called our Honda. The look my mother shot me is still burned into my retinas.

More here-

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/25/christianity-religion-conservative-protest

Church Event in UP Disrupted By Police After Hindu Yuva Vahini Alleges ‘Conversions’

From The Wire-

Police stopped a church event attended by more than 150 people, including ten American tourists, in Maharajganj, Uttar Pradesh after the right-wing organisation Hindu Yuva Vahini alleged that religious conversion was being carried out.

The event was stopped after the youth brigade, set up in 2002 by Yogi Adityanath, now the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, filed a complaint against Yohannan Adam, the pastor of the church, accusing him of converting Hindus to Christianity, a charge the pastor denied.

SHO, Dathauli, Anand Kumar Gupta said no prior permission was taken for the meeting, which was held ahead of Good Friday.

“We stopped the prayer meeting after a complaint was registered. A probe is underway and appropriate action will be taken if the charges are found to be correct,” he said.

More here-

https://thewire.in/122446/hindu-yuva-vahini-church-disruption/

Lee Strobel's Hope for Apologetics in a 'Post-Truth' Culture

From Christianity Today-

Nearly two decades have passed since Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ first hit bookstore shelves. Written as a response to the former journalist’s conversion from atheism, Strobel’s investigation into the truth claims of Christianity remains a landmark work of apologetics, often mentioned alongside mainstays such as C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. And while the culture has changed much since 1998, Strobel insists that using reason to defend—and, more importantly, to share—the gospel remains as important as ever.

Later this week, the film adaptation of The Case for Christ, which tells the story behind Strobel’s investigation and resulting conversion, will premiere at theaters across the country. For this week’s episode of The Calling, CT managing editor Richard Clark sat down with Strobel to learn more about the challenges of adapting his book for the big screen, the role his marriage played in his conversion, and the future of apologetics in a “post-truth” world.

More here-

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/april-web-only/lee-strobels-hope-for-apologetics-in-post-truth-culture.html

Converts to “religion of freedom” are boosting church attendance in Europe

From Patheos-

The Muslim immigrants converting to Christianity are having a noticeable affect on church growth and church attendance in Europe.  (See this, this, and this.)

For the last few decades, churches have been almost empty on Sunday mornings. But congregations that have evangelized Muslims are coming back to life.  For example, theTrinity Lutheran Church in Berlin, which we have blogged about, used to have 150 parishioners.  Now they have 700.

The phenomenon has spread to England.  One Anglican bishop says that one out of four of the confirmations he performs are for Muslims converting to Christianity.

Two stories from British sources after the jump.  They give some inspiring testimonies about how some of these immigrants came to Christ.  A common theme:  the realization that Christianity is “the religion of freedom.”

More here-

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2017/03/converts-to-religion-of-freedom-are-boosting-church-attendance-in-europe/

‘I felt a hypocrite': Author Michael Coren on why he left the Catholic Church for Anglicanism

From National Post (Canada) with video-

Until his recent conversion to Anglicanism, the broadcaster and author Michael Coren was one of Canada’s best known Catholics. He has a Catholic wife and four Catholic children and is the author of books that include “Why Catholics Are Right.” So when he was formally welcomed into an Anglican congregation in Toronto the other day, after worshipping with them privately for a year, the news caused a stir in the Catholic world. False rumours were circulated about his motives. Old scandals from a career in punditry were dredged up. The uproar cost him several speeches to conservative American Catholic groups, and his regular column in the Catholic Register was pulled. As he tells the National Post‘s Joseph Brean, he was driven to Protestantism by a growing sense of hypocrisy.

More here-

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/religion/i-felt-a-hypocrite-author-michael-coren-on-why-he-left-the-catholic-church-for-anglicanism

'God did a real number on me'

From England-

About four years ago, one of the few passersby who dropped into Butterfield's enormous neo-Gothic barn of a church is St Augustine's on a prime piece of real estate in Queen's Gate, South Kensington, would have witnessed an extraordinary sight.

Hour after hour, standing at the altar, they would have seen an ex-offender with startling blue eyes, a shock of wavy brown hair and a face that has clearly 'lived' a little, practising the complex rituals and liturgy of a 34-page High Mass that owes more to 20th-century Rome than his own Church of England, until he knew every step by heart.

Rev Paul Cowley was awarded an MBE in the latest honours, for services to ex-offenders. His story and that of the church he now leads are living witnesses to the power of faith to transform.

More here-

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/god.did.a.real.number.on.me/38314.htm

Becoming Episcopalian: my journey

From Chicago-

My faith journey is taking me on a path I never thought I'd ever take. I was (and still am) very Catholic, but for a variety of reasons, I felt like I could no longer be part of the Roman Catholic Church. I will delve more into the reasons as I write, but yes, one of the reasons has to do with the quite baffling outrage on part of the bishops regarding the "contraception mandate." I had been publicly disagreeing with a few things on my Facebook, questioning the soundness of some of the Church's moral theology.

I am not the first, nor am I the only one to publicly call out the bishops' idiocy and point out the political maneuverings behind some of these decisions.

I know many Catholics are in a similar situation. Quite frankly, the vast majority of dissenters are silent, or at least shouted down by the vociferous minority. Some people are able to just roll their eyes and continue being Catholic, despite being at odds with some of the theology. I tried to do this, but I couldn't sustain it. I just could not consciously say I'm Catholic and and yet dissent, even if I do believe the Church is wrong. It just seemed...hypocritical, maybe. I don't know what word best describes it. Quite simply, there was no room for me if I wanted to keep on growing spiritually and intellectually.

As a result, I'm joining the Episcopal Church.

http://www.chicagonow.com/running-with-a-book-cart/2012/03/becoming-episcopalian-my-journey/

An Effort, Years in the Making, to Capture the Mystery

From The New York Times (A really wonderful story)

The story of a faithful man, and of the unique offering he will be making on Sunday to his church, begins in a Southern California backyard in March 1974. That man, today a prominent Manhattan doctor named James Marion, is then a 10-year-old boy, and he is startled by the sound of screams from inside his family’s home.

When the boy enters, he sees his father vomiting blood, and hears his mother telling his older brother to drive to the hospital. As the car pulls away, Jim catches sight of his father in the back seat. It is the last glimpse he will have of his father alive, for Robert Marion will die a week later at age 40, having slowly bled to death from an ulcer.

Sitting in his Upper East Side office on a recent afternoon, Dr. Marion, 48, says with a physician’s mordant humor that “you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud” to figure out why he ultimately became a gastroenterologist. He became an expert in the kind of disease that killed his father.

The death of Robert Marion plunges his family into poverty. Without his salesman’s salary to support them, his widow and their four sons resort to selling T-shirts at weekend flea markets. There is no more money for parochial school tuition.

More here-

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/us/an-effort-years-in-the-making-to-capture-the-mystery.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=episcopal&st=cse

John Wesley a great evangelist and stalwart Anglican

From Country Live-

The month of May, and the day of May 24th, are important on the Christian calendar for many things, but one remarkable item which needs to be noted and remembered is the outstanding contributions of the Rev. John Wesley, not only to the life of the Church of England and the Methodist movement, but to the whole of society – in the United Kingdom and the around world. May 24, 1738 was day of John Wesley’s conversion, while reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans.

In 1738, John Wesley, a graduate with a Masters degree from Oxford University, was a priest in the Church of England, and a missionary to the English colony of Georgia, in America. Wesley was returning home to England, sad and totally defeated because his work had not been successful. On board Wesley’s ship was a group of German Moravian Christians. A terrific Atlantic storm battered the ship and Wesley was terrifed that it would flounder and sink. In the midst of his gripping fear he noted that the Moravians exhibited no fear or trepidation and in fact were calm; even their children! Wesley was amazed! He began to reflect on his feelings of despair and to search his soul. His thinking may have been, “Why am I, a priest and scholar and missionary, overwhelmed with fear but these Christians fearless? What do they possess that I do not?

On returning home to London Wesley sadly observed, “I went to America to convert the Indians, but who, O who, will convert me?”

As he took up his duties in London Wesley was troubled, and could not find peace. He believed and could recite the creeds, and scripture, but they were words on a page and he found no satisfaction nor freedom from dismay. He was a troubled man.

More here-

Indian pastor arrested under anti-conversion laws

This is a serious problem in the sub-continent. Its not about proselytizing its about the right to determine one's own religion. I witnessed this personally when I was in India and Nepal 10 years ago.

"Police raided Pastor Sam Oomen’s church on August 4 after a man who was baptised levelled charges of forced conversion and allurement.

“India’s growing anti-conversion movement puts the church in real jeopardy,” said Andy Dipper, the chief executive of Release International, an organisation which serves to protect persecuted Christians worldwide."

http://www.religiousintelligence.com/news/?NewsID=2432

An earlier related post can be found here -

http://3riversepiscopal.blogspot.com/2008/07/i-remember-being-in-mumbai-years-ago.html

Legality of Conversion

I remember being in Mumbai years ago and reading an editorial in the English language newspaper discussing whether or not Indian citizens should legally be allowed to change their religion. Here's a story from The Economist about that.

"But America’s religious free-for-all is very much the exception, not the rule, in human history—and increasingly rare, some would say, in the world today. In most human societies, conversion has been seen as an act whose consequences are as much social and political as spiritual; and it has been assumed that the wider community, in the form of the family, the village or the state, has every right to take an interest in the matter."

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=11784873