07AR12-46

Apologia Report 12:46

December 21, 2007

Subject: The U.S. presidential election worldview battle

In this issue:

ISLAM - questioning the liberal tolerance of Europeans in response to the murder of Muslims there who convert to Christianity

MORMONISM - Romney vs. Huckabee nomination fight continues to reveal significant worldview contrasts

YOGA - Hindu publisher laughs at early Western criticism

+ a review of Nancy Roth's Invitation to Christian Yoga

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PLEASE NOTE: This is the final issue of AR for 2007. Publication is scheduled to resume beginning with the week of January 7, 2008.

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ISLAM

"Muslim Apostates Threatened over Christianity" (no byline) -- a good resource for explaining what Europe faces as Islam continues its growth there. This item begins with an account of death threats for Muslim converts to Christianity in the UK.

"'Intimidation is very widespread and pretty effective,' says Maryam Namazie, a spokesperson for the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. She believes that many of the deaths classified as 'honour killings' are actually murders of people who have renounced Islam.

"'I get threatened all the time: emails, letters, phone calls,' she says. 'When I returned home this afternoon, for example, there was a death threat waiting for me on my answering machine ...' She laughs nervously.

"'A lot of them aren't serious, but occasionally they are. I went to the police about one set of threats. They took a statement from me but that was it - they never contacted me again.'

"That treatment is in sharp contrast to the seriousness with which the Dutch and German police responded when members of the Council of Ex-Muslims in those countries made complaints to the police about death threats.

"'The heads of the Dutch and German organisations are today both living under police protection,' Ms Namazie explains.

"Last week, it was reported that the daughter of a British imam was living under police protection, after receiving death threats from her family for having left Islam. ...

"Most leading Muslims in Britain are unequivocal in their denunciation of British Muslim parents who threaten to kill their children for leaving Islam.

"Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), says that it is 'absolutely disgraceful behaviour ... In Britain, no Muslim has the right to harm one hair of someone who decides to leave Islam.'

"Inayat Bunglawala, also a spokesman for the MCB, insists that such behaviour in Britain is 'awful and quite wrong. The police should crack down on it.'"

The article goes on to note that "out of the 57 Islamic states in the world today, seven have a legal code that punishes Muslims who leave the religion with death.

"That number may soon increase: Pakistan is currently considering a Bill that would make apostasy a capital crime for men and one carrying a sentence of imprisonment for women.

"As it is, ordinary Pakistanis take the law into their own hands and kill Muslim apostates. The same thing happens in Turkey where, earlier this year, two people were killed for 'having turned away from Islam'.

"Patrick Sookhdeo was born a Muslim, but later converted to Christianity. He is now international director of the Barnabas Fund, an organisation that aims to research and to ameliorate the conditions of Christians living in countries hostile to their religion.

"He notes that 'all four schools of Sunni law, as well as the Shia variety, call for the death penalty for apostates. Most Muslim scholars say that Muslim religious law - sharia - requires the death penalty for apostasy.

"'In 2004, Prince Charles called a meeting of leading Muslims to discuss the issue,' adds Dr Sookhdeo. 'I was there. All the Muslim leaders at that meeting agreed that the penalty in sharia is death. The hope was that they would issue a public declaration repudiating that doctrine, but not one of them did.'

"The reluctance to condemn sharia law is widespread. I asked Mr Bunglawala, for instance, to condemn the Islamic states that imposed the death penalty for apostasy. He did not do so, merely commenting that 'it was a matter for those states'." The Telegraph (UK), Dec 9 '07, n.p. <http://tinyurl.com/2tfe7a>

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MORMONISM

"Holy Huckabee!," the big headline on Newsweek's December 17 cover introduces numerous features, the first of which, "A New American Holy War" by Jon Meacham (pp30-33), points out that there exists a good deal of friction between the worldviews represented by the two frontrunners for America's Republican presidential nomination. For example: Mike "Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, declined to say whether he agreed with evangelical Christians who believe Mormonism is a heretical cult. 'First of all, I don't think it's appropriate for me to start evaluating other religions,' Huckabee said. 'The more I answer these questions, the more people want to say, 'Ah, you describe yourself as a theologian,' or 'Oh, you're the one who is setting yourself up as a judge of religions.' I am damned if I do; I am damned if I don't.'

"Then he did. Asked if he thought Scriptural revelations from God ended when the Bible was completed, Huckabee said: 'I don't have any evidence or indication that he's handed us a new book to add to the ones, the 66, that were canonized in 325 A.D. ... It was a careful process that adopted those books. That was something I did study in college and seminary É the process by which we ended up with those books. I don't know that there's any other books.'

"Which no doubt comes as a surprise to the world's nearly 13 million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who, like [opponent Mitt] Romney, believe that God did indeed reveal another text in 19th-century America, the Book of Mormon. For Huckabee, such a disagreement in a matter of faith can be no small thing."

Meacham concludes well by not emphasizing polarization. "In 1808, Jacob Henry, a Jewish-American, was elected to the state legislature of North Carolina, which refused to seat him unless he was (a) a Protestant and (b) conceded the divine authority of the Old and New Testaments. Here is what Henry said to them: 'Governments only concern the actions and conduct of man, and not his speculative notions. Who among us feels himself so exalted above his fellows as to have a right to dictate to them any mode of belief?'

"Too many people do feel so exalted, which is why religious believers, who far outnumber those who do not believe, have a special obligation to be humble and gracious and respectful." <http://www.newsweek.com/id/74472>

The included sidebar, "Disparate Doctrines: Two Faiths in Conflict" (p33), spells it out as clearly as anyone could expect for a national newsweekly: "their beliefs clash when it comes to some of the most fundamental aspects of Christianity." Though very brief, crucial remarks include:

* - SCRIPTURE - "[Mormons] also consider 'The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ' and newer revelations to Joseph Smith and other prophets as Scripture;"

* - GOD - "Like Jesus Christ, God has a humanlike body that is immortal and perfected. Mormons believe in eternal progression and that they may someday become gods;"

* - SALVATION - "After being resurrected, all will be judged, and according to the Plan of Salvation, their level of reward in the afterlife depends on how they lived their earthly life."

* - SIZE OF CHURCH - "About 100 million Americans - a third of the population - are evangelical Protestants. (Evangelical population estimates vary by survey.)

"Mormon Six million Americans belong to the Mormon Church, comprising about 2 percent of the population. Roughly a quarter of U.S. Mormons live in Utah; more than half live outside the U.S." <http://www.newsweek.com/id/74475>

Newsweek's main feature, "A PastorÕs True Calling" by Holly Bailey and Michael Isikoff (pp34-37, 39, 41-44), paints a picture of saint and sinner - good enough to lure away Romney votes, bad enough to be disqualified for leadership nominations in many churches due to being anything but "beyond reproach" as stipulated in the apostle Paul's first letter on church leadership requirements to Timothy (3:10). <http://www.newsweek.com/id/74469>

A similar example of increased visibility bring dramatic contrasts to attention is seen in the New York Times story "Huckabee Is Not Alone in Ignorance on Mormonism" by Laurie Goodstein which notes that Mormonism "shares many beliefs with traditional Christianity. But it departs substantially on key doctrines...." The title refers to a "question posed by Mr. Huckabee ["Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?"] in an article to be published Sunday [Dec 16] in The New York Times Magazine and available at nytimes.com/politics [which] is one of the standard sensationalistic A-bombs often hurled at Mormons by their detractors, said Scott A. Gordon, president of the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, a group based in Redding, Calif., that defends Mormon theology. ...

"In Mormon theology, God is literally the father of all beings, and all beings once existed in a 'premortal' state as 'spirit beings,' said Robert L. Millet a professor of religion at Brigham Young University, a Mormon institution in Provo, Utah. Jesus was God's first-born son, and everyone who came after that, including Satan could be considered the siblings of Jesus, he said. ...

"Latter-day Saints believe that after the death of the early Christian apostles, Christianity veered into a 'Great Apostasy.' They see their church as the restoration of true Christianity, brought about in the 'latter days' beginning in the 1820s by the prophet Joseph Smith." While brief, this article is loaded with the "shadowy" remarks that Meacham refers to at the beginning of the first Mormonism article identified above. <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/us/politics/14mormon.html>

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YOGA

"The History of Yoga in the American Press" (no byline) -- from Hindu Press International's October 8, 2007 issue comes this opportunity for its readers to laugh at what Americans first thought of yoga nearly two centuries ago. The source for the story is the April 2007 edition of Utne Reader [1], which "recounts the coverage of yoga and Hinduism in the American press since the beginning of the 19th century when Ralph Waldo Emerson's father published the first Sanskrit scripture translation in the United States.)

"Some Excerpts:

"To the American consumer of news (around 1910), yoga was no longer just a queer pastime; it was evil, a con, a cult - uncivilized, heathen, and anti-American. Even the word became a metonym for secret doorways and sex worship; yogis were nothing more than swindlers and seducers.

"In the autumn of 1911, the slimiest - but in retrospect the most entertaining - of these attacks was published by the Los Angeles Times. 'A Hindu Apple for Modern Eve: The Cult of the Yogis Lures Women to Destruction,' the headline read. 'The incense of sandalwood burned in their honor all the way from the Lake Shore Drive to Fifth Avenue and the Back Bay,' the article said. 'These dusky-hued Orientals sat on drawing-room sofas, the center of admiring attention, while fair hands passed them cakes and served them tea in Sevres china.' Toward the end of the year, Current Literature published a version of a recent piece titled 'The Heathen Invasion of America,' which concluded: 'Literally, yoga means the 'path' that leads to wisdom. Actually it is proving the way that leads to domestic infelicity, and insanity and death.'

"The federal government was apparently prodded into action by such press reports. 'Agents are now quietly at work investigating the strange spread of these Oriental religions throughout this country,' the Washington Post reported in early 1912. The article listed a roster of female converts and their tragic ends: Miss Sarah Farnum 'gave her entire fortune' for a Hindu summer school. Miss Aloise Reuss, of Chicago, went to live in the Illinois Insane Asylum. Mrs. May Wright Sewell, of Indianapolis, Indiana, was made 'dangerously ill' by the teachings of her yogi."

And suddenly, the next criticism of yoga that we see seems to suffer under the increased burden of greater scrutiny. Case in point, in her review of the book An Invitation to Christian Yoga by Nancy Roth, Priscilla Friedlander explains that Roth "provides biblical and theological reasons to show how the practice of hatha yoga in a Christian context can deepen one's relationship with God. Drawing upon her experience as an Episcopal priest, while applying exercise physiology, Roth shows how each position is a devotional in itself.ÊHer book's purpose is to teach Christians how to use yoga as part of their spiritual practice in the form of 'body prayer,' integrating body and spirit.

"Some Christians may find the idea of body prayer attractive, since Roth provides a theological framework in which a Christian can practice yoga.ÊHowever, the problem with Roth's book is the lack of a well-integrated Christian worldview behind her theology." Another problem that Friedlander includes is that "a Christian may be opening the door to demonic influence if she practices yoga."

Further, "The exercises Roth illustrates are simple poses that have been named over time, to include them in the practice of yoga. It isn't necessarily the exercises themselves that conflict with the Christian worldview; it is often the purpose behind them. "The problem lies in joining one's body and spirit in a prayer that, though intended for the Christian God, was originally intended for Hindu deities." Denver Journal, Oct 25 '07 (online only), <http://tinyurl.com/yqdv5y>

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Sources, Digital:

1 - <http://www.utne.com/issues/2007_140/features/12487-1.html>

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