Jonathan's blog

From an article of the same title by Christian author Philip Yancey in Christianity Today:

Several years ago a Muslim man said to me, "I find no guidance in the Qur'an on how Muslims should live as a minority in a society and no guidance in the New Testament on how Christians should live as a majority." He put his finger on a central difference between the two faiths. One, born at Pentecost, tends to thrive cross-culturally and even counterculturally, often coexisting with oppressive governments. The other, geographically anchored in Mecca, was founded simultaneously as a religion and a state. As a result, in strict Muslim countries, religion, culture, and politics are unified. Whereas in the U.S. school boards debate the legality of one-minute nonsectarian prayers at football games, in Muslim countries commerce and transportation screech to a halt at the call to prayer five times a day. Many Muslims seek the official adoption of Shari'ah law, derived from sacred writings and similar to the all-encompassing code in the Pentateuch... Theocratic culture also opens up the potential for moral coercion-as Christians know from our own history. In Algeria, radical Islamists cut off the lips and noses of Muslims who smoke and drink alcohol. In some Muslim countries, the morals police publicly beat women who dare to ride in a taxi unaccompanied by their husbands, or who drive a car alone. Adultery or conversion to Christianity may warrant a death sentence... Hearing firsthand about Islamic culture increased my understanding, but it also made me nervous about my own society. The very things we resist in Islam, some Christians find tempting. We, too, seek political power and a legal code that reflects revealed morality. We, too, share a concern about raising our children in a climate of moral decadence. We, too, tend to see others (including Muslims) as a stereotyped community, rather than as individuals. Will we turn toward our own version of the harsh fundamentalism sweeping Islam today?

Via Andrew Sullivan's blog, Shep Smith with a verbal slip-up on Fox News:

From the August 18, 2006, issue of The Week, an article of the same tite:

Morality monitors are back in Afghanistan. The government of President Hamid Karzai has begun cracking down on "un-Islamic" activities such as drinking. In the past month, police raids have closed down bars across Kabul, and dozens of suspected prostitutes have been deported. The Cabinet has even proposed reinstating the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Discouragement of Vice, a body that under the Taliban was notorious for whipping men whose beards were too short or women whose veils showed their faces. Officials insist that the agents would serve as gentle reminders, not punitive enforcers. "We would not beat people or force women to wear scarves," said Interior Ministry official Abdul Jabbar Sabit. "But we have to do something to protect society, to tell people they should not drink alcohol or smoke hashish."

Media like the flim Osama and the novel The Kite Runner have made me more keenly aware of the evil of the Taliban, the morality police. Let's hope and pray that they won't be ascendant again in Afghanistan, here (yes, we have them of a sort), or anywhere else.

Via digg, from an article of the same title from BBCNews.com:

The Netherlands is the rich nation which does the most to improve lives in developing countries, a Center for Global Development (CGD) report says. The UK is 12th in the annual Commitment to Development Index of the world's 21 richest nations and Japan ranked last... The CGD's measures a broad number of factors for the index, rather than merely the amount of aid countries provide. It also examines several policy areas - such as trade investment migration and environment - while aid is measured not only in terms of quantity but as a share of its income and the quality of aid given... Meanwhile, despite the US giving the largest amount of aid that donation was the smallest in relation to the size of its economy.

From an AP story of the same title:

The minister of a church that dismissed a female Sunday School teacher after adopting what it called a literal interpretation of the Bible says a woman can perform any job _ outside of the church. The First Baptist Church dismissed Mary Lambert on Aug. 9 with a letter explaining that the church had adopted an interpretation that prohibits women from teaching men. She had taught there for 54 years. The letter quoted the first epistle to Timothy: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent." The Rev. Timothy LaBouf, who also serves on the Watertown City Council, issued a statement saying his stance against women teaching men in Sunday school would not affect his decisions as a city leader in Watertown, where all five members of the council are men but the city manager who runs the city's day-to-day operations is a woman. "I believe that a woman can perform any job and fulfill any responsibility that she desires to" outside of the church, LaBouf wrote Saturday.

This, IMO, is a major weakness of the traditional view of "women's roles" commonly held by members of the church of Christ and others. The Rev. has spelled it out. Apparently, in his opinion, there are two distinct sets of rules governing how Christians should interact with one another: one set that governs "secular" or "outside the church" activities and another that governs "spiritual" or "inside the church" activities. This duality is not something that I see supported in scripture. If you hold the extremely restrictive view of the role of women (as, admittedly, you might reasonably do based on a certain interpretation of passages like the one quoted above..I don't pretend that the case is a slam dunk for either extreme), then IMO you must apply the same principle to other interactions between Christian men and women "outside the church" if you are to maintain consistency (as some do). On the other hand, if you are unwilling to apply those same principles "outside the church," maybe you should ask yourself why and re-examine your view of what should go on "inside the church." Or at least justify why Biblical principles regarding the role of women apply only "inside the church."