Do They Know It’s Christmas in Sierra Leone? Ebola Cancels Celebrations
Deadly disease brings a bit more accuracy to much-maligned Band Aid advocacy song.
The lyrics to a popular yet much maligned Africa advocacy song are now a bit more defensible, given that Ebola has led Sierra Leone to ban Christmas celebrations.
“Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?” asks the chorus of Band Aid’s 1984 fundraising success, rerecorded this year by Bono, One Direction, Chris Martin, and other artists to raise money to combat Ebola in West Africa. In hard-hit Sierra Leone, the government just banned public gatherings that celebrate Christmas and New Years amid anxiety about the spread of the deadly disease.
“Ebola is hitting us very hard because we are a very close-knit society,” said President Ernest Bai Koroma in a Sunday address. “We are in very close proximity to each other, we can reach each other’s towns and villages in record time; our relatives are everywhere seeking jobs, businesses and other opportunities. That is why a tragedy anywhere in Sierra Leone is a tragedy everywhere in this country.”
Reuters reports that Sierra Leone intends to send out troops to enforce the measure. Religion News Service reports that the general secretary of Sierra Leone’s Council of Churches believes Christians should be allowed to attend church on both holidays.
Sierra Leone currently has the highest number of cases of Ebola. Since the outbreak began, it has suffered more than 8,000 cases and roughly 1,900 deaths, reports the BBC.
Victor Zizer, a Sierra Leone theologian supported by ScholarLeaders International, describes the “typical celebration” of Christmas in Sierra Leone:
Christmas is first and foremost, always a family time – a reunion of close relatives. Because Christmas falls at rice harvest, the day is celebrated …
Do They Know It’s Christmas in Sierra Leone? Ebola Cancels Celebrations
Deadly disease brings a bit more accuracy to much-maligned Band Aid advocacy song.
The lyrics to a popular yet much maligned Africa advocacy song are now a bit more defensible, given that Ebola has led Sierra Leone to ban Christmas celebrations.
“Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?” asks the chorus of Band Aid’s 1984 fundraising success, rerecorded this year by Bono, One Direction, Chris Martin, and other artists to raise money to combat Ebola in West Africa. In hard-hit Sierra Leone, the government just banned public gatherings that celebrate Christmas and New Years amid anxiety about the spread of the deadly disease.
“Ebola is hitting us very hard because we are a very close-knit society,” said President Ernest Bai Koroma in a Sunday address. “We are in very close proximity to each other, we can reach each other’s towns and villages in record time; our relatives are everywhere seeking jobs, businesses and other opportunities. That is why a tragedy anywhere in Sierra Leone is a tragedy everywhere in this country.”
Reuters reports that Sierra Leone intends to send out troops to enforce the measure. Religion News Service reports that the general secretary of Sierra Leone’s Council of Churches believes Christians should be allowed to attend church on both holidays.
Sierra Leone currently has the highest number of cases of Ebola. Since the outbreak began, it has suffered more than 8,000 cases and roughly 1,900 deaths, reports the BBC.
Victor Zizer, a Sierra Leone theologian supported by ScholarLeaders International, describes the “typical celebration” of Christmas in Sierra Leone:
Christmas is first and foremost, always a family time – a reunion of close relatives. Because Christmas falls at rice harvest, the day is celebrated …
News: Sorry, Tertullian
Recent research tests the most famous adage about the persecuted church.
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Steve Green made it the chorus of “The Faithful,” the CCM singer-songwriter’s 1998 ode to persecuted Christians. But is it true?
In Carthage, North Africa, early church theologian Tertullian argued that persecution actually strengthens the church; as martyrs bravely die for the faith, onlookers convert. Some 1,800 years later, restrictions on religion are stronger than ever. According to the Pew Research Center, 74 percent of the world’s population live in a country where social hostilities involving religion are high, and 64 percent live where government restrictions on religion are high. Does this explain why Christianity is likewise growing worldwide?
Not necessarily, says missiologist Justin Long, who recently compared Pew’s latest tally of religious freedom restrictions to Operation World’s latest tally of Christian growth (see chart). His conclusion: Church growth is “not strongly” correlated with either governmental or societal persecution. However, Christianity “tends loosely” to change more rapidly (grow or shrink) when governmental restriction is high, and stays relatively stable when such pressure is low.
History offers a “truly mixed record,” said William Inboden, a Texas scholar affiliated with Georgetown University’s Religious Freedom Project. “Even though Christ gives the Great Commission before his Ascension, it almost takes the initial outbreak of persecution [in Acts] to spread the gospel,” he said. But within 1,000 years, the once “largely Christian lands” of the Middle East and North Africa became overwhelmingly Muslim, he notes. Now their remnant …
News: Sorry, Tertullian
Recent research tests the most famous adage about the persecuted church.
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Steve Green made it the chorus of “The Faithful,” the CCM singer-songwriter’s 1998 ode to persecuted Christians. But is it true?
In Carthage, North Africa, early church theologian Tertullian argued that persecution actually strengthens the church; as martyrs bravely die for the faith, onlookers convert. Some 1,800 years later, restrictions on religion are stronger than ever. According to the Pew Research Center, 74 percent of the world’s population live in a country where social hostilities involving religion are high, and 64 percent live where government restrictions on religion are high. Does this explain why Christianity is likewise growing worldwide?
Not necessarily, says missiologist Justin Long, who recently compared Pew’s latest tally of religious freedom restrictions to Operation World’s latest tally of Christian growth (see chart). His conclusion: Church growth is “not strongly” correlated with either governmental or societal persecution. However, Christianity “tends loosely” to change more rapidly (grow or shrink) when governmental restriction is high, and stays relatively stable when such pressure is low.
History offers a “truly mixed record,” said William Inboden, a Texas scholar affiliated with Georgetown University’s Religious Freedom Project. “Even though Christ gives the Great Commission before his Ascension, it almost takes the initial outbreak of persecution [in Acts] to spread the gospel,” he said. But within 1,000 years, the once “largely Christian lands” of the Middle East and North Africa became overwhelmingly Muslim, he notes. Now their remnant …
Court Stops Execution of Mentally Ill Man Defended by Many Evangelicals
Evangelicals divide over the death penalty, but leaders agree on the unusual case of Scott Panetti.
More than 50 evangelical leaders often at odds recently united, asking Texas to commute the death sentence of a mentally ill inmate who believes he is being persecuted for preaching the gospel. Scott Panetti’s execution was scheduled for today. This morning, an appeals court delayed his death with just hours to spare.
Shane Claiborne, David Gushee, Lynne Hybels, Joel Hunter, Sam Rodriguez, Jay Sekulow, and other conservatives and progressives signed the letter, which states that Christians are called to protect the most vulnerable and that Panetti, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia since the 1970s and murdered his in-laws to “get rid of the devil” inside them, falls into that category.
“If ever there was a clear case of an individual suffering from mental illness, this is it,” says the letter, whose other signatories include author Brian McLaren, Billy Graham Center prison ministry director Karen Swanson, Evangelicals for Social Action co-president Paul Alexander, Wheaton College’s Applied Christian Ethics Center director Vincent Bacote, former North Park Theological Seminary president John Phelan, and National Latino Evangelical Coalition (NLEC) board member Danny Diaz. “Mr. Panetti is a paranoid schizophrenic…. He believes that he is being put to death for preaching the gospel, not for the murder of his wife’s parents.”
In the decade before he murdered his in-laws in 1992, Panetti, now 56, was hospitalized at least a dozen times for schizophrenia, manic depression, hallucinations, and delusions of persecution, The New York Times reports. During his trial, Panetti won the right to represent himself, and tried to subpoena Jesus, the Pope, and John F. …
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