November 20, 2009
A few days ago I posted on Liberty University’s reaction to a group of college Democrats meeting on its campus and whether or not the college had actually shut the group down.
Well, looks like the story’s still brewing, with Liberty and the College Democrats due to meet on Wednesday. Stay tuned.
Granted, the news out of North Korea rarely strikes me as “good,” and these days the situation there seems particularly dire. Earlier this week, the isolationist country tested a second nuclear bomb, conducted some short-range missile drills and leader Kim Jong-il seems to be getting more belligerent with each passing news brief. North Korea’s known for playing high-stakes matches of brinksmanship to get what they want, but these games of chicken make me a little queasy.
But according to the folks at Open Doors USA, a Christian ministry that monitors areas in the world where Christians are often persecuted, North Korean believers think North Korea’s latest round of sabre-rattling is an opportunity to further evangelize in this closed country.
“What an awesome testimony that Christians inside North Korea have started a prayer campaign for evangelizing the entire country, says Open Doors USA President/CEO Carl Moeller in a recent press release. “We need to keep them in our prayers as they risk their lives for their faith.”
That’s not just hyperbole, according to the folks at Open Doors. North Korea is the world’s No. 1 persecutory country of Christians, according to the organization’s World Watch List, and Moeller says an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 of the country’s 200,000 estimated political prisoners are Christian.
I went to my son’s high school graduation last night. While it’ll be a night I’ll remember for a long, long time, it probably wasn’t that much different from the countless high school graduation ceremonies taking place across the country right about now: students walk across a stage, grab their diplomas, pose for pictures. Speakers exhort students to treasure the times behind them and embrace the world in front of them. Make a difference, graduates are told: Find a cure for cancer. Press for world peace. Leave the world a better place than you found it.
Two speakers quoted the same Mahatma Gandhi quote last night: ”You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
How true.
But.
We don’t have to be new graduates to make a difference. We don’t need to be 18 to change the world.
Sometimes I slip into state of mind where I think that my path is pretty much set: I am who I am, and my main goals aren’t so much “making a difference” to making sure I’m reasonably comfortable. It’s tempting, sometimes, to think Gandhi wasn’t talking to middle-aged fogeys like me.
But God calls us to make a difference every day. Often, it’s through small, daily duties: Conversations, interactions, gentle acts of kindness. But sometimes, we’re being called for harder, more important purposes. We’re called to strive and dream and sacrifice, to write bold letters across the epic poem of history. To leave the world better than we found it.
God wants us to make a difference, and I read stories every week about those who are doing amazing work in Christ’s name. When I come across such stories, I’ll tell you about them: In the meantime, I don’t think any of us should forget that we have stories of our own to write–no matter our age or income or denomination. We are called to make a difference. And I, for one, need to remember that calling more clearly with each passing morning.
According to this release from the WorldWide Religious News service, the Vietnamese government is indeed claiming church land as property of the state–more than 2,200 parcels in all. And it apparently has no intention of giving it back:
Now, in an interview with Radio Free Asia Nguyen Thanh Xuan, vice chief of Commission for Religious and Ethnic Affairs has stated that his government “has no intention to return any properties to the Catholic Church or any other groups of religion” citing the principle of national ownership of land.
President Barack Obama has nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to fill a soon-to-be-vacated chair on the Supreme Court now held by retiring Justice David Souter. She’s apparently Catholic, or at least was raised as such, and “attends church for family celebrations and other important events,” according to Steven Waldman over at Beliefnet.
That makes her the sixth Catholic on the nine-person Supreme Court–pretty remarkable, considering the United States is just 23 percent Catholic, and the percentage is shrinking. Of Americans raised Catholic, according to the Pew Research Center, only 68 percent remain so. The fact that she only attends Mass on “important events” might suggest that she’s more representative of modern American Catholicism than the Catholic Church would like.
Michael Paulson of The Boston Globe does a very nice job rounding up what various religious media minds think of Sotomayor’s nomination–and whether, frankly, the fact that she’s Catholic means much of anything at all.
Considering Liberty University was founded by the late Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority and one of the pillars of Christian conservatism, it’s perhaps not that surprising that students ran into a problem when they formed a College Democrats club there. As Amy Sullivan over at Time suggested, the real shocker is that such a group formed in the first place.
Indeed, when Brian Diaz first proposed the club last fall, he was flabbergasted the college, located in Lynchburg, Va., approved it. The group was able to campaign for Barack Obama last fall and celebrate his inauguration this January.
But on May 15, Diaz received word, via e-mail, that Liberty was removing any mention of the club from its Web site, and that the College Democrats would be, er, de-officialized.
Even though this club may not support the more radical planks of the democratic party, the democratic party is still the parent organization of the club on campus. The Democratic Party Platform is contrary to the mission of LU and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the “LGBT” agenda, Hate Crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc). … By using LU or Liberty University and Democrat in the name, the two are associated and the goals of both run in opposite directions.
The controversy led many media folks to believe that Liberty’s College Democrats club had been, essentially, outlawed. Most media reports I read indicated the group was being forced to off-campus–a conclusion I might’ve jumped to, too, considering the e-mail sent to Diaz included the following quote from Liberty’s “Students Clubs and Organizations Policies:”
No student club or organization shall be approved, recognized or permitted to meet on campus, (my bold) advertise, distribute or post materials, or use University facilities if the statements, positions, doctrines, policies, constitutions, bylaws, platforms, activities or events of such club or organization, its parent, affiliate, chapter or similarly named group (even if the similarly named group is not the actual parent, affiliate or chapter) are inconsistent or in conflict with the distinctly Christian mission of the University, the Liberty Way, the Honor Code, or the policies and procedures promulgated by the University.
But hold yer horses, there, buckeroos. In an op-ed piece to the Christian Newswire, Liberty President and Chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr., said that the club wasn’t being kicked out–just being distanced from Liberty’s official seal. After all, the parents who pay for their kids to go to Liberty aren’t coughing up good tuition money to see their kids go all liberal on them.
“While students are free to meet on campus, debate and discuss politics of every stripe,” Falwell writes, “the University will remain true to its’ core principles and not lend its’ name or fund groups that work to undermine the principles that make Liberty attractive to so many people.”
Hmmm. Lots of interesting issues surrounding this story. Love to hear from you as to what the biggest might be.
© 2009. The Reader's Digest Association, Inc.
