Dr. Monica Melancthon chosen as the Distinguished Alumni 2009 of LSTC

Dr. Monica Melancthon was chosen as one of the 2009 LSTC Distinguished Alumni by the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago Alumni Board. She will be honored at a banquet at the seminary on February 10 and receive the Theological Education in the Global Church Award. Melancthon is the author of numerous articles in leading international journals. She serves on the Lutheran World Federation and other international organizations. Gurukul is proud of having her in its faculty as the Head of the Department of the Old Testament and professor of women's studies. Other recipients of the 2009 award are the Rev. Dr. Martin Marty, the Rev. Melody Eastman, and the Rev. Dr. Fred Strickert.

We congratulate Dr. Monica Melancthon on this great recognition by her alma mater.

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THE VOICE NEW TESTAMENT

There is a "new" book called The Voice which is a revision of the New Testament produced with the help of Emergent church guru Brian McLaren. This is what he has to say about this revision:

"Works like J.B. Phillips’ translation and more recently Eugene Peterson’s The Message have done us a great service. They have given us Bibles with literary style. But unfortunately, they have rendered the whole Bible into one literary style. That is an improvement over tofu-vanilla scholarly translations in many ways, but one of the fascinating things about the Bible is that it is the work of forty-some writers, each with their own unique style. SoThe Voice would do something unique: it would pair writers who write with a distinctive literary style together with scholars who would pay close attention to accuracy in light of our best scholarship."

Some examples of terms used in Voice: Christ is translated  as “Liberating King, ”baptism as “ceremonial cleansing” [since it is derived from evolved from the Hebrew “mikhveh” bath… which was used to cleanse women at the end of the menstrual cycle]  “Son of Man” as “New Generation of Humanity”.  Scripture Interpreter:

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Saudi Arabia Sponsors UN Inter-faith Conference

World leaders today gathered at the United Nations in New York City to launch a two-day interfaith conference sponsored by Saudi Arabia. 

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hailed the Saudi initiative as “truly inspiring”, and said that countries should work to ensure that “our rich cultural diversity makes us more secure – not less.”

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Obama gives hope

JOHN J. THATAMANIL

This year, we all voted with pride for Barack Obama.Much has been said about Obama as a child of a black father and a white mother. What has not been appreciated is his appeal to those of us who are immigrants because of his early years in Indonesia.

Obama speaks to those of us who love this country and have made it our adopted home. Even though Obama is a child of a U.S. citizen and was born in Hawaii, he also feels like one of us because he bears in his memory the sights, sounds and smells of other lands. He has family in every corner of the planet. So do we. We love our new home fiercely, but we cannot imagine how a prosperous and secure American future can be won at the expense of other peoples.

Love for our mother countries is deep, but we do not long to return. When I visit India, I am somehow outed within seconds as an American even before I open my mouth. Is it the directness of my gaze? Is there a confidence or even cockiness in my stride that comes from being raised in the home of the brave?

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Celebrations mark 525th anniversary of Luther's baptism

Lutheran congregations worldwide are joining in celebrations today for the 525th anniversary of the baptism of protestant reformation founder Martin Luther.

The worldwide “Baptism Festival” on Tuesday, the day after the anniversary of Martin Luther’s birthday on November 10, 1483.  Martin Luther was born in Eisleben and was brought by his parents to be baptised in St Peter Church the day after he was born, according to the customs of the time.

“A developed theology of baptism is a central part of our Lutheran heritage and this festival is a way to emphasise that importance in our home congregations and worldwide,” said the Rev Scott A. Moore, an ELCA pastor serving St Andreas-Nicolai-Petri in Lutherstadt Eisleben and Saints Peter and Paul Church in Volkstedt, Germany.

Luther gave his last sermon at St Peter Church before he died February 18, 1546, in Eisleben.

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Realistic Hope and Hopeful Realism: Martin Marty on Niebuhr's influence on Barack Obama

The election of Barack Obama says -- about America and to the world -- that it is open to "realistic hope" and "hopeful realism." Those two two-word phrases paraphrase themes from the mid-century theological great, Reinhold Niebuhr. I mention him because President-Elect Obama is influenced by him and quotes him (as did President Jimmy Carter, the other theologically literate president of our time). Niebuhr is a formidable and sometimes formidably difficult thinker, and some cynics suggest that when politicians quote him, they are just posing Columnist David Brooks checked up and found that Senator Obama could discourse intelligently and expansively about Niebuhr. It is clear to those who know Niebuhr and who read and observe Obama, that he has internalized some Niebuhrian motifs.

I am singling out the combinations of "hope" and "realism" because the nation and the world needs a dose of hope, and hope has been a main theme of Obama the author, who used the word in a book title, and who accurately sensed the need and a hunger for hope. This is as true of a demoralized nation as it is of much of "the world" as it looks on forlornly to a fornlorn America Those of us who have been visited with e-mails from around the world since Tuesday report to each other how consistently correspondents testify to and exemplify a quickening of hope once again.

If "hope" is so manifest also now, after the election, why burden it with the word "realistic?" Or, if you start out with the "realism" that candidate Obama always displayed and will do more so as he begins to come to terms with the presidency in a time whose problems do not need enumerating, though they do get listed by virtually all commenators? Answer: realism can be so realistic that it can breed cynicism, or, as one wag put it recentlry, we observe that "the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned out."

"Realistic hope" is a caution against utopianism, naive idealism, the claiming of bragging rights, or politically "not knowing to come in out of the rain." As author, community organizer, law school professor, state and U.S. senator, and presidential primary candidate, Senator Obama tirelessly invoked and promoted hope--and always coupled his invocation and promotion with cautions We hear it all the time: righting wrongs and charting new courses in a dangerous world and with a destroyed economy allows no chance to relax and sit back.

Niebuhr liked to quote Psalm 2:4, where the Psalmist witnesses to a God who sits in the heavens and laughs, and holds the pretentious and conniving powerful "in derision." Yet he kept reminding us that the same God held people responsible and did not dishonor human aspiration.

So: the election of the first African-American president, a choice that went beyond the wildest hopes of most of adult America is only a part of the "hope" package the nation will be opening in the months ahead. And the election of THIS African-American to the presidency means a turning to a leader who may be young, but wasn't "born yesterday." His reading of Niebuhr and his experience and observation of life as it is lived in complex times will show up in his "realistic" activity. Or am I too hopefully naive even to hope that this will be the case? Realistically: no.

 Ethics Readerr

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Nation: 'No Democracy, No Nationalism, No Secularism' SIMI Leader -Yasin Patel

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Anjali Lama's Worship and Sermon

Anjali Lama's Worship and Sermon

Anjali Lama conducted her B.D. evaluation worship and sermon in Gurukul chapel on Wednesday, November 5, 2008. The Nepali Invocation was sung by Dn. Aby paul. A Hindi song, written by Sonia John, composed by Sandeep Paramarth and sung by Alice Jose added flavour to the worship. The theme of the sermon was "Christ's Vision of Women as Apostles." There was a choreography on the theme by Sweety Helen. The text used was John 20: 11-18, the resurrected Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene. The text was enacted by Sonia John, Daiju Joseph, Jeremiah and Belinda. Anjali included some additional material on the story from the Gospel of Thomas. The disciples rejection of witness by Mary was thus strongly communicated. The song, prayers, choreography, enactment made clear the theme. The sermon had two main points: 1) Restoring the vision of Christ by enabling women's agency 2) Restoring the vision of Christ to enable women to become apostles. She strengthened the sermon by narrating her personal experience as a woman in the Church and society. There was a rangoli (alpana) at the entrance of the chapel depicting the Chinese symbol of mutality, Yin-Yang, which conveyed the thrust of the sermon, as commented by the staff  evaluator, Dr. Suneel Bhanu. The sermon was delivered with clarity and conviction. Anjali's reply to the comments from evaluators has been gracious. Anjali is a memebr of Independent Pentecostal Church, Kathmandu, Nepal. She has joined Gurukul as a B. Th. upgrader. She proved herself to be a good student and an able worship leader. We wish her ministry all success.

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Rising poverty and high growth economy

The revised benchmark by the World Bank is the average of the national poverty lines of the worlds’ 15 poorest countries. The ADB’s benchmark is Asia-specific based on surveys from 16 Asian countries. When these benchmarks are used for estimating poverty levels in India, the situation becomes grave and uncomfortable. By using the first poverty line, the estimated number of poor in India during 2004-05 was 456 million or 41.6% of the total population. 

According to the second poverty line, the number of poor in India was 622 million, which is 54.8% of the population. Evidently, these estimates are significantly above the official estimates of 27.5% indicated by the Planning Commission. Among the states, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, MP, Orissa indicate that around 40% of the population is below the poverty line. 

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Barack Obama's victory speech

World

World: The impact of Barack Obama’s win

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Barack Obama's religion: Intellectual search of faith

Barack Obama's religion: Intellectual search of faith

 In 1981 Barack Obama was 20 years old, a Columbia University student in search of the meaning of life. He was torn a million different ways: between youth and maturity, black and white, coasts and continents, wonder and tragedy. He enrolled at Columbia in part to get far away from his past; he'd gone to high school in Hawaii and had just spent two years "enjoying myself," as he puts it, at Occidental College in Los Angeles. In New York City, "I lived an ascetic existence," Obama told NEWSWEEK in an interview on his campaign plane last week. "I did a lot of spiritual exploration. I withdrew from the world in a fairly deliberate way." He fasted. Often, he'd go days without speaking to another person.


For company, he had books. There was Saint Augustine, the fourth-century North African bishop who wrote the West's first spiritual memoir and built the theological foundations of the Christian Church. There was Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century German philosopher and father of existentialism. There was Graham Greene, the Roman Catholic Englishman whose short novels are full of compromise, ambivalence and pain. Obama meditated on these men and argued with them in his mind.   

more from  Lisa Miller and Richard Wolffe | NEWSWEEK

LifeLine: faith and Spirituality

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Jose P. Mathew's Worship and Sermon in Gurukul Chapel

Captain Jose P. Mathew, from the Salvation Army, India South Western (Kerala) region, now studying in Gurukul, conducted his evaluation worship and sermon on 29th October 2008. The invocation was led by Jose himself. During the invocation Salvation Army flag, representing victory and authority ( the colours of which symbolized Trinity: bluie - Creator, red - blood of Jesus, yellow -  the work of the Holy spirit), was elegantly carried by the young daughter of Jose. His wife, Alice, a good singer, led the Bhajan which was written by Jose himself and composed by John G. Varghese. It reflected the   theme of the sermon, prophetic mission of building a new community.

The sermon was based on the text, Ezekiel37: 1-10. Jose started his sermon with the story of Colonel Yesudasan, founder of the Salvation Army in Kerala, who brought new life to the marginalized and the downtrodden Dalits of Kerala. Jose P. Mathew lamented that instead of building a community, now the "spiritual mafia" is taking over the church, making the Church, a religion of the market, without any sense of  divine call or  clear vision. Ezekiel is an example of a prophet who had genuine call from God and a clear vision for  the society:  The "dry bones," he saw represented the pathetic situation of the people in the valley. Today the Churches are insensitive to the realities of the valley --  the injustice, poverty, violence against the dalits, women and the marginalized in society. Instead of a people oriented ministry what we have now is a " task oriented and tradition oriented ministry."  "Creating a new community out of dry bones is the mission of the Christians," he said. "Building community is not to convert people from other religions or bring people form other churches. "He quoted Mother Theresa who once told a journalist: I convert Hindus to be better Hindus, Muslims to be better Muslims, and Christians to be better Christians. Mission is liberating people form spiritual and physical bondage. Kingdom of heaven is the place of a liberated community. Jesus' sacrificial work on the cross was laying down his life for building a new community. Jose P. Mathew delivered the sermon in a  clear and convincing manner. He was confident  and proved himself  to be an efficient worship leader.

Jose and his wife  are  experienced ministers in the Salvation Army. Salvation Army always encourages team ministry of the whole family. We pray that Jose and his family would make  the ministry of the Salavation Army  much more effective in India. 

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George Zachariah in Geneva Consultation on Climate Change

An important international Consultation  on Climate change was  organized by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Department for Theology and Studies (DTS) during  2-4 October,2008,  in Geneva. Eminent   biblical scholars, theologians and ethicists like  Dr Sigurd Bergmann who teaches at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, Dr Colette Bouka Coula, DWS program officer for Central and Francophone Africa,  Dr Chiropafadzo Moyo from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe, Dr Christof Hardmeier,  professor of Old Testament from Germany, Rev. Dr Barbara Rossing, who teaches New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, USA, Dr Christoph Stückelberger of the Geneva-based global network on applied ethics, Globethics, and  Dr James Martin-Schramm of Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, USA,  and Dr. George Zacharia from Gurukul   presented papers. 


Giving an account of what his students heard when they went out to local communities using the LWF survey, Dr George Zachariah, who teaches at the Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute in Chennai, India, focused on the spirituality of those displaced from their land and livelihood because of climate change. He argued that many prevailing climate change discourses were an attempt to “absolve the sins of neo-liberal capitalist plunder,” and called for attention to the spiritual resources of subaltern communities that can “decolonize our minds, our faiths, our communities, and our planet.”


Papers presented at the consultation and other related resources are being developed for a book to be published in the Theology in the Life of the Church series in early 2009, as well as a discussion resource for use in local communities. 


read it all  



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Rowan Williams: DOSTOEVSKY, reviewed by A. N. Wilson

As we read Williams’s discussion, and become absorbed not only in his enjoyment of Dostoevsky’s novels, but also in his own wide reading in the patristic literature and immersion in the Eastern traditions of Christianity, we begin to realize that ambiguities and downright contradictions which seem so startlingly “modern” in Dostoevsky’s pages are often matters that have always been inherent in theology. The book thereby combines a rereading of Dostoevsky with an attempt to confront, not merely the storm clouds of the nineteenth century, as Ruskin called the theological crisis of faith, but also our contemporary phenomenon of Darwinian revivalism which believes itself to have answered, or repeated, the destruction of theology’s claims to plausibility.


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Behind Conversions

"I am a Syrian Jacobite who converted to New Life, but nobody forced me to do so. As long as I was with the mainstream church I had no personal encounter with Jesus Christ. I was a Christian only because I was born into that religion. I had many problems and many fears. I used to drink and smoke. I used to get terrible dreams. I went to a psychiatrist, but the drugs he gave me only made me feel drowsy. I found my peace after I joined New Life and accepted Jesus as my personal saviour. It was not a change of religion it was a change of heart." Similarly, there was the story of a Hindu woman who had joined a Pentecostal group to escape the agony caused by her infidel husband. Also the story of a fisherwoman who had shown the light to a family, one of whose members was infected with HIV; a mother who had to find prayers for her daughter who was suffering from terminal cancer and so on. Verghese's pastor, Gopinath, was himself a Hindu-Brahmin from Kerala, who had converted into New Life and founded its unit in Udupi.  more

Church in India:

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Mujibur Rehman on violence against minorities in India

Orissa’s religious violence is intriguing because Oriya sub-nationalism was never rooted in Hindu religion. Instead, it grew around the Oriya language. It was Lord Jagannath and his cult which defined the mainstream Oriya  religious traditions. The statement  once made by an unknown Bengali writer, “Oriya ekta bhasa naye (Oriya is not a language)” became a rallying cry for a separate state movement leading to the creation of Orissa on April 1, 1936. Madhusudhan Das, a noted barrister, led a mass political movement through his political party, Utkal Sammilani, which was independent of the Congress Party. The idea of Orissa, along with Sindh, as a separate state, was floated in a White Paper prepared by British in 1933, as a sequel to the report of the Simon Commission. Thus, Orissa is the first state to be created on the basis of a separate language and inspired state reorganisations across linguistic lines in post-independent India.

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Nation: Orange County 

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Justice B K Somashekhar Commission of Inquiry into anti Christian violence, invites statements

The public can file statements in the office of the commission or may send to:

The Secretary,
Justice B K Somashekhar Commission of Inquiry,
Balabrooie Guest House, Palace Road,
Opposite to BWSSB Office, Bangalore - 560052

or

Home Office,
Justice B K Somashekhar Commission of Inquiry,
# 175, Brindavana, 3rd E Cross, II block, III stage,
Basaveshwaranagar, Bangalore - 79

or

deputy commissioners of all districts.

Statements can also be emailed to - enquiry@jbkscol.org

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Church in India Under Attack

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Ananta Kumar Nag - Worship and Sermon

Ananta Kr Nag conducted his worship and sermon on 22 October 2008. The theme of the worship was "Living Christ in a dying Society. The Oriya Invocation song was written by Paras Khosla. The Bhajan was written by Babu Abraham. A solidarity song in Hindi, modified out of SCM solidarity song by Sandeep, also was used. All these songs were appreciated by the evaluators. The text of the sermon was 1 Peter 4:12-17. Ananta Kumar Nag derived two points from this text: 1) Living Christ in a Lifeless Society and 2) Living Christ to Encounter the unjust power Structures. The context of the sermon was the present persecutions of Christians in Orissa. In a power point presentation numerous stills of destroyed houses and churches were shown and this added some emotional flavour to the whole worship. The community was moved by the pathetic conditions of Christians in Orissa. However, the preacher deriving strength from the lessons of the early Church, which was the background of Peter's epistle, expressed hope in the power of the resurrected Christ to make persecutions an opportunity for the further spread of the Gospel.

Ananta Kumar is an ordained minister of the Jeypore Evangelical Lutheran Church and we hope that God will use him as a powerful instrument to continue the mission of Christ with vision.

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Church in India Under Attack: Orissa police to invoke Section 160 CrPC on nun who was raped

The Orissa police is contemplating invoking Section 160 of Criminal Procedure Code to force the allged rape victim nun to cooperate with the police, official sources said on Friday.

The state government, which was happy with the Supreme Court which refused to order a CBI probe into the case, was surprised at the nun's media conference in Delhi where she reiterated her lack of faith in Orissa police and said she will not like to be further harassed.

According to the section 160 of CrPC, any police officer making an investigation can order a person to appear before him and the person has to follow the order.

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"Pithavu" is one who ptotects and not a gender based noun

 A pithaavu is one who bestows 'arivu'(Wisdom) give shelter/protection, (abhayam) sutains (paalikkuka). Pithavu is not necessarily a father. Hebrew or Aramaic abba  also refers to father and mother.

Interfaith

See >Abba Amona (Hebrew, Jewish). Lit., "Father-Mother"

Abba 'abba' (Chaldean) (cf Hebrew 'ab, Syrian abba or abbo) Father, origin, source, transliterated in the Greek text (Mark 14:36) as 'Abba. The phrase "Abba Father" has become a title of invocation to the first person of the Trinity; in Coptic and Syriac churches, Abba (father or master) is a title of the patriarch of bishops. In the Qabbalah, 'Abba is the original principle symbolized by Kether (the Crown). >read

 

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The word “Abba,” is a transliteration. The word “Father,” is a translation. There is no English word that adequately conveys the meaning of the Aramaic word, “Abba.” This is why the translators gave us this transliteration – Abba. The word conveys a close intimacy that is reserved for parents and children. We might compare the word to dad, but this doesn’t do it justice. This (Mark 14:36) is the first use of the term in the Scripture. The next time (chronologically) it is used is in Galatians 4:6 > read

 Click here to read  from the Mercer Dictionary of the Bible

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