LiturgicalCredo.com’s Blog

Hey folks, it’s Reformation Day!

That’s right – Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenburg church door on Oct. 31, 1517.

Long before Hallmark and Hersheys turned subsequent October Thirty-Firsts into something about black cats and pumpkins.

Long after it was acceptable to sacrifice people in celebration of Samhain.

Why not celebrate with this polka:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU0f_qJLkLg 

We’ve published a review of Praying with Beads: Daily Prayers for the Christian Calendar (Eerdmans) by Nan Lewis Doerr and Virginia Stem Owens.

Read the review at http://www.liturgicalcredo.com/BookReviewPrayingWithBeads.html . If you’re interested in purchasing the book, please use the link that appears beside the review.

Don’t forget to check out the three new poems by Phil Bauman at http://www.liturgicalcredo.com/PhilBaumanPoems.html .

JERUSALEM — Rapid police and fire department response to a blaze in a Western Jerusalem Baptist church averted extensive damage from an act police believe is arson. Police have no suspects. A church that once stood on the same land was destroyed by ultra-right-wing Jewish arsonists in 1982. The rabbi of a Reform Jewish congregation has offered its synagogue for Christian meetings.

 -Compass Direct News

We have posted three new poems by Phil Bauman at http://www.liturgicalcredo.com/PhilBaumanPoems.html .

Here is a short bio of Phil:  The Rev. Dr. Philip J. Bauman is the Senior Pastor at The United Church of Christ in Medfield where he has served for 11 years.

ISTANBUL – Muslims who attacked a Pakistani church and declared religious war against Christians from mosque minarets have apologized for their actions, human rights workers said. The threats included demands that Christians of Gowindh, a Punjabi village of 10,000, convert to Islam or “be prepared to fight or die.” Muslims ended their boycott against trading with the 300 Christians. This incident is the latest in a pattern of church attacks in which perpetrators apologize and avoid facing charges.

 -Compass Direct News

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria – Asabe Ladagu, a Christian widow in this capital city of Borno state in northern Nigeria, has survived without income the past 16 months. It was that long ago, the former librarian told Compass, that Muslim administrators at Ramat Polytechnic forced her into early retirement – without pay – after she and others requested land to build a chapel. “We were branded as dangerous people because we are Christians,” Ladagu said. She had put in 35 years of government service as Ramat Polytechnic’s librarian and chief lecturer. “Other Christian brethren too have either been forced out or have been the subjects of witch-hunts,” she said. The Rev. Joshua Adamu, chairman of the Borno state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria, asserted that persecution of Christians has become a state policy.
 

-Compass Direct News 

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia – A pastor in Argentina has received threatening letters and had posters of his face displayed in Quilmes after the city’s mayor closed down the congregation’s newly constructed ministry center. The Rev. Raul David Caballero said the closure for alleged building code violations in March was part of a harassment campaign mounted against him for exposing corruption in the administration of Sergio Villordo. The pastor of the 1,200-member Church of the Encounter is also editor-in-chief of Perspectiva Sur, which has published articles critical of Villordo. Church of the Encounter has appealed the closure decision, but Caballero said a prompt resolution is unlikely as Villordo controls the municipal court.

-Compass Direct News

Two Iraqi priests kidnapped more than a week ago said they returned to their Mosul parish in good health yesterday morning and immediately celebrated mass. Captors freed Father Pius Affas and Father Mazen Ishoa at an undisclosed location in Mosul at 11 a.m., Fr. Affas told Compass Monday. The release came a day after two other Christians were abducted and an Orthodox priest’s son was shot to death. Fr. Affas did not comment on whether the church had paid a $1 million ransom initially demanded by the kidnappers. The priests’ captors had given Syrian Catholic Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa until Saturday (October 20) to raise the money. Unknown men kidnapped Fr. Affas, 68, and Fr. Ishoa, in his 30s, on October 13 in Mosul’s Hay al-Thawra neighborhood.

-Compass Direct News

I didn’t know this during the ceremony, but Bishop Jeffrey N. Steenson’s last service in the Cathedral Church of Saint John in Albuquerque, N.M., was Friday evening’s induction of Very Rev. Mark Goodman as Dean of the Cathedral.

Yesterday evening, my good friend Mark Goodman was instituted and seated as Dean of the Cathedral Church of St. John here in Albuquerque, N.M.

Bishop Jeffrey N. Steenson, head of the Diocese of the Rio Grande, was the celebrant. Steenson has announced that he will resign and join the Roman Catholic Church. Mark’s institution was part of the Convocation Eucharist of the 55th Annual Convocation of the diocese.

Kristi and I attended with another member of Trinity Episocopal Church in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where Mark had his last job as Rector and Dean of the Georgetown Deanery.

-Colin Burch