Bartholomew's Notes

Interesting news from ASSIST about the return of an evangelical television station in Mongolia:

For nearly ten years Eagle TV operated as the sole voice of independent journalism on television in Mongolia, airing Christian programming and generating more than 10,000 contacts for evangelism.

Now the new Eagle Broadcasting Company begins broadcasting on terrestrial Channel 8 in Mongolia’s capital city on Saturday, October 22, 2005.

The old Eagle closed down in 2003 following a dispute between American and Mongolian partners. An AP report at the time gave some additional information, including an interview with general director Tom Terry. The article is now fairly obscure, so I’ll quote at length:

“Eagle TV was founded for two purposes. One was to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ and the other reason was for the advancement of freedom and democracy,” Terry said.

Eagle TV went on the air in 1995. Over the years, its programming included evangelists, biblical cartoons, Christian rock videos and testimonies by newly converted Mongolians.

…Eagle TV grew out of an unlikely alliance in 1992 between born-again Christians from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Mongolia’s newly democratic government.

…Mongolian leaders wanted to instill Western-style broadcasting in this former Soviet ally. The country had only one television station — the state broadcaster linked to the formerly communist Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party.

With many of Mongolia’s 2.4 million people living in poverty, no station stood to make a profit. But the Americans agreed to pay for Eagle TV, on condition that it show evangelical programs along with its other fare.

…Eagle’s coverage included a six-part series in 2000 titled “Swindle of the Century” that looked at claims of corruption at the state-owned Erdenet copper mine, Mongolia’s biggest business. Much of the criticism in the report was aimed at the former ruling party.

Following the broadcast, an Eagle TV editor was beaten by unknown attackers. Burglars stole documents used in the broadcast from the home of another employee.

…Steve Posey, president of the American group that owned half of Eagle TV, said in an e-mail from Sioux Falls that 10,000 viewers have called the station over the past three years to ask religious questions. He said about 2,500 later converted to Christianity.

As the Gulf War got underway, ASSIST reported that:

According to Terry, Eagle’s war coverage began within minutes of the formal outbreak of war. He said that the station cut into CNN news broadcasts hourly with local updates from Arab press agencies, interviews with Mongolian news makers like the former prime minister and live on air telephone calls with people expressing their opinions on the hostilities.

…According to Terry, the country’s government controlled media have commented that people should not be allowed to give their opinions.

Lack of independent television is a continuing problem in Mongolia  – just last summer opposition democrats occupied the state television building in protest against their lack of access to the airwaves during an election.

The relaunched channel is completely owned by a missionary organisation called the AMONG Foundation (AMONG is short for “America Mongolian”), which is based in South Dakota. Both Terry and AMONG’s president, Steve Posey, also work for Campus Crusade for Christ. The AMONG website is not as informative as one might hope – there’s no statement of faith or any schedule, and I’d be interested to see which evangelists and programs are being beamed across Mongolia. However, some extra information is available from Terry’s blog, where he argues for missionaries to support democratisation – a position of “Faith and Freedom”, as he puts it in the title of a recent book. His website includes an extract:

How is it that many missionaries and missions organizations, empowered and supported for their work by American capitalism and American freedoms, must distance themselves from the provision that makes much of their work possible, while many of the countries they reach are moving toward the political ideologies of freedom and democracy? Did the Apostle Paul distance himself from his Roman citizenship when he was on mission, or did he take advantage of it? (Acts 22:25-29, 25:10-12) Didn’t the original eleven Apostles also serve as an example when they refused to obey Israeli [sic] limitations on their religious speech? (Acts 4:18-20, 5:27-29)

My experience at Eagle Television is unique. For Eagle’s American shareholder, AMONG Foundation, faith in Jesus Christ is paramount, but Faith and Freedom are closely related. I am not referring to the specific policies of the American government, which changes leadership every four years, but to the foundational principles that make the American system possible. From my perspective, freedom of speech, press, and religion-as espoused in the First Amendment, according to the original understanding of the Founding Fathers—are so closely tied to biblical concepts; it is hard to divorce them. But not all Christians or missionaries agree, for practical as well as philosophical reasons…postmodernism, cultural correctness and good intentions have pushed many missionaries to do that which is impossible– divorce their political ideals from the religious concepts and liberties that molded them.

UPDATE: Tom Terry has kindly left a comment. As he includes some extra information, I’ll repeat what he says below:

I enjoyed reading your article about Eagle TV and AMONG Foundation. Even in this short piece you have demonstrated what most Mongolian journalists lack. It doesn’t take much to do even a little research to find background information about a subject and produce a well-rounded story. Hats off. Regarding the AMONG web site: We haven’t updated it in some time, but are looking at creating a an AMONG blog. Expect more about that in the coming weeks. For now the most updated information online about Eagle TV is my web site: www.thomasterry.com.

In your piece you mentioned it would be interesting to know what preachers we are airing. Quick answer: None. Our Christian programming features a monthly run of a mini-series or movie event about the life of a Biblical Character. Our focus is simply to find creative ways to present the historicity of Christianity and its principle characters in the Bible. No “name it and claim it,” or other such questionable materials. We do produce a short 30-minute documentary each month based upon the movie segments that ties the life of each biblical character into the New Testament history of Jesus Christ. We try to have all of our productions have as much of a Mongolian look and feel as possible. In fact, Eagle TV has more Mongolian produced programming than every other station in Mongolia combined – and we’re completely American owned. That’s not something you find in foreign media work very often. God bless, Tom Terry Managing Director Eagle Broadcasting Company Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

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When I saw this, I thought for a couple of minutes that it might be one of the “Hebraic Roots” people in action (note the Jesus Star of David). However, it’s actually from a Fred Phelps parody site.

(Pic via Murmurings of a Mind Malcontent)

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The Cleveland Jewish News has a piece on non-Jews who are adopting a Jewish identity, which has been a recent topic of this blog. Reporter Stephanie Graber names the phenomenon as the “Hebraic Roots” movement. The trend goes further than the Noachide movement, in which non-Jews keep deference to the “laws of Noah” and generally support Israel (I’ve fixed some typos in original):

These gentiles in Jewish clothing actually claim to be the “true Israelites” and direct, biological descendants of the lost tribe of Ephraim. Of course there are no DNA or blood tests to confirm this unsubstantiated claim.

Angus Wootten, one of the movement’s grandaddies, explains in his book Restoring Israel’s Kingdom how someone can find out if he or she is a biological member of the tribe of Ephraim: You simply “have a ‘conviction,’ a knowing that we know.”

…From their websites and links, it would appear there are about 30 Ephraim-style groups in Ohio alone, although it’s hard to get an exact count because they use so many names: Ephraimites, Hebraic Roots Christians, Lost Tribes, Northern Kingdom, Israelites, House of Israel, Messianic Christians, and House of Joseph.

…Tired of being “second-class citizens,” these self-proclaimed “Ephraimites” demand that Jews “recognize” them as “Israelites” and that would include rights to the Middle East real estate.

Well, there is a precedent in the case of the Black Hebrews, African-Americans who made the same claim some years ago (our friend Prophet Yahweh is to some extent related to that movement); in 2003 the group was given permanent residence status in Israel, with a view to citizenship. There’s also the recent case of the Mizo, a tribe of Indian animists that converted to Christianity in the 1890s; they also developed a Jewish identity, becoming the “Bnei Menashe”, and have now been officially declared to be a “Lost Tribe” by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. If not them, why not American Protestants? Perhaps part of the problem is that the “Hebraic Roots” movement is a bit too pushy:

In 1948, “…instead of naming this Jewish state ‘Judah’…they named it Israel,” Wooten writes.”“Now, in one fell swoop, the Jews grabbed the title back.” Wootten is appalled that these Jews had the chutzpah to name their country “Israel” when those of his “tribe” knew it was partially theirs!

Another issue is that these “Ephraimites” have a place for Jesus in their mythology, while the Mizo went through a Judaizing process before entering Israel. Graber includes an interview with Eddie Chumney, who tells us that Jesus’ Gospel was really about uniting the Israelites (Christians) with Judah, through Jewish law; this message was obscured by the Catholic Church. As I wrote on this blog last month, Jesus was also the stumbling block between one such “Hebraic Roots Movement” and Rabbi Michael Bar-Ron, who liaises with Noachides on behalf of the “Sanhedrin” recently set up by members of the Israeli far-right.

Garber also interviews a couple of Rabbis, who are not impressed with the movement’s practices, such as adopting the term “rabbi” for their leaders:

If someone were to call him or herself an attorney or physician and attempt to practice as such, that individual would be thrown in jail, says Rabbi [Tovia] Singer. Using the title “rabbi” won’t get someone thrown in jail, but it is consumer fraud, he adds.

Singer is a Jewish “counter-missionary”, who has had various clashes with Christian ministers and Messianic Jews. One of his main opponents, naturally, is Jews for Jesus; however, Jews for Jesus is not very happy with these “Ephramites” either, and has a page linking to various critiques of the movement. The British-Israelite element  particularly sets off alarm bells (although, weirdly, Bar-Ron is impressed with the idea, and it is promulgated by a Jew named Yair Davidy). Jews for Jesus quotes a report from the International Messianic Jewish Alliance:

Both groups (Anglo-Israelites and Ephraimites) build their theories on the mythic story of the ten “lost tribes” of the northern kingdom. Both groups put great store by suspect and contrived etymologies of English words based on Hebrew. Both groups claim pre-eminent, “first-born” status as purported heirs of Ephraim. Both share an innate hostility toward Roman Catholicism and Judaism. Both proclaim that the teaching they propound is a “mystery” revealed only through their teachers. Both argue that the lost tribes migrated to areas where they eventually became known as Saxons. Both groups make mention of the nobility of anglo-Saxons as evidence for their biblical, Israelite heritage.

…The movement is growing to the point that it now has some areas of overlap with the Christian Zionist movement as well as the Messianic Jewish movement. As a result of this, there are several spokespersons in both these groups who advance this teaching while maintaining primary affiliation either as Christian Zionists or as Messianic Jews.

Hostility to Judaism is also noted by Graber (another big difference with the Noachides):

[Wooten] seems to have particular disdain for the Orthodox, labeling them, among other things, as mean-spirited rock-throwers.

According to anti-cult pundit Rick Ross, these groups are “mushrooming”.

(Tipped from Cult News Network)

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Premillennialist founds 1,000 Churches

Keeping with the subject of missionaries, news from Crosswalk:

Dr. Charles Blair and the Blair Foundation, Denver, Colorado, announced August 31, 2005 the successful completion of a two-year project to secure sponsors to fund the planting of 1,000 evangelical churches in the previously unreached region of Benishangul-Gumuz, Ethiopia, bordering the Sudan. The project began in response to a plea from the region’s born-again president, Yaregal Aysheshim, and officially launched September 1, 2003, at which time there were only seven churches in the entire region.

…Land for construction is granted by President Aysheshim as soon as a village congregation reaches 25 adult members. Typically, each Ethiopian missionary establishes sister churches in at least two neighboring villages, making possible the complete evangelization of all 3,000 villages and the estimated one-million+ populace of the Benishangul-Gumuz region in the next two years.

Must be nice to be the president of a region where you can just hand out government land to any religious group you happen to sympathize with…

The website of the Charles E Blair Foundation gives some details about the mission and the man:

Founded in 1967, the Blair Foundation remains committed to expanding, worldwide, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Blair by providing on-site leadership and discipleship training, and Bible resource materials.

And what would that teaching ministry be?

He is the best-selling author of When the Journey Seems Too Great; Lose the Weight of the World; and The Man Who Could Do No Wrong – required reading at several leading Christian colleges and seminaries. In 1990, he served on an editorial committee for Thomas Nelson Publishers, providing the commentary for the book of Job in The Spirit-Filled Life Bible…

He serves on several international missions boards; and is an active member of the Pre-Trib Rapture Study Group, a group of esteemed Bible scholars devoted to instructing, encouraging and equipping the Endtime Body of Christ [actually, this should be Tim LaHaye’s Pre-Trib Research Center – RB].

Apocalypticism and Christian Zionism are central to Blair’s teaching, and he is the author of a DVD set entitled March of Prophecy:

The March of Prophecy is an unforgettable, fast-paced expedition through time.  Armed with personal full-color charts of their own, your congregation – and the many visitors they bring – will travel through 6,000 years of human history – “His-Story” – God systematically making and keeping His promises to man.  It’s God’s plan through the ages – graphically displayed – larger than life!

…We’ll watch the great scroll of Revelation unfurl, unleashing Tribulation wrath, Armageddon, the Millennium, the Final Judgment of all mankind, and Eternity Future – mysterious Apocalyptic events revealed as God – ordained closures to previous chapters of human history!

Back in 1967 Blair also authored a Prophecy Chart, which features a “great period of world-wide evangelism” following the creation of the State of Israel (next comes the “First Resurrection” of the dead into heaven, followed by the inevitable “Antichrist makes peace treaty with Israel.”). His “21 Signs of Christ’s Return” can be seen here.

Meanwhile, web-based information about Benishangul-Gumuz is somewhat thin on the ground, but there are these statistics from 1996:

The religious composition of the population is:

Muslim 44.1%

Orthodox Christians 34.8%

Traditional religions13.1%

Protestants 5.9%

No information was available in the census data on the remaining 2.1 percent.

Yaregal Aysheshim (var. “Yaregal Aysheshum”) was the governor of Benishangul from 1995 until last month. Details are scarce, but he seems to have had a commitment to development, education, and democracy (although he was involved in the brief jailing of a journalist who refused to reveal his sources back in 2001).

In 2003, Charisma provided some more background information to Blair’s involvement:

The foundation for the Ethiopian partnership was laid in 1989 when Calvary Temple in Denver opened its door to a congregation of Ethiopian believers who had come to the United States to escape persecution by the communist regime in their homeland.

When the socialist government of the country fell in 1991, Calvary Temple pastor Charles Blair was invited to Ethiopia to help local church leaders make the transition from underground cell groups to thriving, visible congregations.

…[Dr Howard] Foltz [of Accelerating International Mission Strategies (AIMS)] accompanied Blair in 1996, helping to train Ethiopian church leaders, pastors and missionaries. Today the ongoing partnership continues to yield a harvest of new believers and church plants.

According to Pamella Foster, AIMS director of operations, the evangelical church in Ethiopia faces many challenges. In addition to persecution from Muslims, Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church leaders have joined forces with the Islamic movement to persecute evangelical Christians. “Leaders from the evangelical church in Ethiopia believe they alone stand between their government and a total Islamic takeover,” Foster reported.

In spite of these obstacles, more than 8,000 Muslims in one region alone have come to Christ in an 11-month period. “A Muslim man who converts to Christianity will have his wife taken from him and given to another Muslim man,” Foster said. “In addition, he may be disinherited and even stoned.”

The report also noted that Blair was working in conjunction with the Evangelical Churches Fellowship of Ethiopia. Christianity Today takes the story further:

Talargie Yeshidenberb was the national representative of the Blair Foundation in Ethiopia. Two years ago, Yeshidenberb, a veterinarian, looked up from his desk in the capital city, Addis Ababa. In the doorway was Yaregal Aysheshim, president of the Benishangul-Gumuz province and one of the few Christians in government.

Blair said Aysheshim was impressed by the transforming power of Christianity, and so “challenged us to help the Evangelical Churches Fellowship of Ethiopia begin 1,000 churches in that many villages in his province, before his current term of office ends this September.”

And Benishangul-Gumuz is just the beginning – Blair hopes to see 14,000 churches across the country.

However, there is one aspect to Blair that is only lightly touched on. Charisma also reported in February that:

In the 1970s, he found himself the subject of newspaper headlines after he unwittingly sold unsecured securities in an effort to raise funds for a retirement center. He was fined and put on probation, and the church went on to repay the investors.

Christianity Today adds:

In August of 1976, a jury found the Reverend Charles Blair, pastor of the 6,000-member Calvary Temple in Denver, Colorado, guilty of seventeen counts of fraud and illegal sale of securities. Blair had raised $14 million from about 3,400 investors to finance the church’s ill-fated geriatric center.

…From all reports, Charles Blair is a man of integrity, a conclusion reinforced by his commitment to repay every investor. No evidence suggests he, or his family, benefited in any way from the illegal sale of securities. Though Blair knowingly allowed financially troubled investors to invest in the Life Center, nothing suggests he intended to defraud them.

All of which makes this scenario more troubling: this is not the story of an evil man reaping the wages of sin but the tragic account of a good man whose vision exceeded his judgment.

However, Alan Prendergast was rather less indulgent in the Denver Westword in 1997:

…True, Blair has made attempts to help out some investors, liquidating personal assets in the process. But he’s also helped himself to funds that were supposed to repay folks impoverished by his huckstering, thereby compounding his original sin. And he has never publicly acknowledged the degree of his guilt in the affair, preferring to speak vaguely of past “mistakes” and failure to properly supervise his underlings. As a group of Christian mediators put it more than a decade ago, “His public response to the problem has been to trivialize his own fault in it, which is really a form of denial.”

…1983: Claiming that Blair has a moral obligation to help the most destitute victims of his failed dream, several Life Center investors seek the help of the Christian Conciliation Service of Denver, an evangelical dispute-resolution group. Blair tells the CCS panel that he has donated “about $100,000” to investors and can’t afford to give more; he also insists he was guilty only of a “technical” violation of failing to offer a proper prospectus. After a thorough examination of the evidence, the panel disagrees, finding that Blair had engaged in “a pattern of dealing unfairly with other people’s money.” The group urges Blair to make restitution to his victims and to publicly confess his responsibility for the disaster. Blair does neither.

Two years later, Prendergast followed the story up with an account of Joel Levitt, a Calvary Temple ex-member who believed that Blair had broken his promises to pay back a remaining $1 million or more:

“I showed him a letter he signed in 1991,” Levitt says, “promising that he was going to work as hard as he could to repay them. He told me, ‘I didn’t mean to pay back the people who sued. Why would I do that?’ He said that these people were hidden enemies of the church and that they should be my enemies, too. He said that all distressed investors who didn’t sue were repaid, with a few exceptions, and that’s an absolute lie.

“I confronted him, probably like no one confronted him. He got up and prayed. I told him he had to make restitution, and he said something like, ‘Oh, I’d give a couple of bucks.'”

In 2000, the unhappy affair was reported in the Denver Business Journal, and the outstanding figure was given as $1.8 million. Levitt had been expelled from the church, and so he could no longer legally demand access to church records. In 2001 he lost an appeal against this, but the appeal decision also noted that (emphasis added):

The Church, a Colorado nonprofit corporation, has a complex financial history closely linked to the activities of its former pastor, Charles E Blair. A series of fundraising campaigns and financial failures in the 1970’s and 1980’s resulted in multiple lawsuits and extensive debt. The 1986 Second Mile Campaign, intended to pay off the remainder of the Church’s unpaid creditors, resulted in further class action litigation. In 1991, that lawsuit was settled by agreement of the majority of the class members, obligating the Church to pay a $700,000 settlement. Notwithstanding this settlement, the original debt to unpaid creditors was never paid in full. In March 1999, the congregation voted not to attempt to repay any remaining unpaid creditors.

Well, why would they, when the church has far more important work to do in Ethiopia? And who needs savings anyway, when the Rapture is just around the corner?

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From the BBC:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said he is about to expel a US missionary group, New Tribes Mission.

The leftist leader said the group were “imperialists” and that he felt “ashamed” at their presence in indigenous areas of Venezuela.

He accused the Florida-based group of making unauthorised flights and setting up luxurious camps amid poverty.

…New Tribes, he said, flew in and out of the country without proper permission from the authorities.

New Tribes Mission (NTM) was founded in 1942. According to its website:

New Tribes Mission continues to trust God, and God continues to be glorified. Today more than 3,000 missionaries serve throughout the world, and training programs in more than a dozen countries prepare missionaries for service among the thousands of tribes who have yet to hear.

It is currently planting “tribal churches” in 18 countries. It has been a source of controversy in Venezuela for many years, although the group can probably thank Pat Robertson’s recent attacks on Chavez for its expulsion. Nikolas Kozloff of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs noted last month:

Though New Tribes Mission did not put out an official statement about the Robertson controversy, [Resource Director David Zelenak] says Robertson‘s strong words “did not help us in Venezuela.” Indeed, Robertson‘s offensive hardly stands to benefit New Tribes, which has fallen under attack in the past and presents a vulnerable target.

Kozloff’s article includes a lengthy and polemical history of NTM’s activities in the country. NTM arrived in 1946, and received official recognition from a military government in 1954. As the group progressed, it gained

…a staff of more than 150 including missionaries, linguists, pilots, engineers, technicians and others. It also had its own communication network. By 1980, God’s soldiers had 2 Bible institutes, 6 basic training camps, a linguistic institute, a radio station, a medical center, and a housing complex for retired missionaries. Even more impressive, New Tribes built 29 air strips from which their light aircraft fleet operated. The airstrips and settlements all fell under their exclusive control. According to one investigator, “not even the armed forces can easily use those airports. In fact, the runways are constructed for specially equipped planes that can land on extra short runways.”

Claims followed that the NTM was politicising the Indians and creating a “state within a state”; complaints from Indians about the undermining of their traditions also received wide attention:

For some prominent government figures, the issue of New Tribes and the abuse of indigenous peoples had become a matter of national pride. Simon Alberto Consalvi, the former Venezuelan chancellor, remarked that “The accusations about what is happening in Amazonas and some other Venezuelan regions…constitute a recurring theme. This is not a superficial matter…It’s not a secret to anyone that light aircraft go and come without oversight. Some time ago I accompanied the Mexican chancellor to a beautiful place in the Venezuelan Guayana. I was greatly surprised (certainly not very agreeably), when a Venezuelan Indian began to speak in English as if we were a group of tourists. The Indian was surrounded by Bibles…I had the impression that I was in some place in California, where they invent religions and cults in bulk.”

NTM was also accused of espionage, in conjunction with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (a major Bible translation outfit); the group was actually expelled from Colombia for allegedly helping transnational companies find strategic deposits. The controversy continued in 1980s:

The story of New Tribes Mission refused to die. In August 1981, Jose Vicente Rangel, then a deputy in Congress, requested that the investigation into New Tribes be reopened…He personally wrote the introduction to a book attacking New Tribes Mission, remarking on that occasion, “What this is fundamentally about is a security problem and national defense. It’s about the abandonment of immense frontier territory.” Rangel went on to praise those who had campaigned against New Tribes, which, in his opinion, had set up a colonial enclave in the country.

Rangel is currently Venezuela’s vice president.

UPDATE: NTM responds to the charges. Agape Press reports:

…We’re a nondenominational, evangelical Protestant mission,” Zelenak asserts, “and our focus there [in Venezuela] is to work in areas of literacy training, Bible translation, and church planting. We also do community development. We have no connection whatsoever with any political organizations.”

Plus:

Meanwhile, some Venezuelan groups are voicing support for NTM and denouncing President Hugo Chavez’s order to expel the missionaries. According to AP, Jose Kayupare of the Puinare tribe rejects Chavez’s claim that New Tribes Mission is part of an “imperialist infiltration” that exploits native communities.

Kayupare told the press “the majority of indigenous people” in Venezuela’s jungles “don’t support” and “are not going to accept under any circumstances” Chavez’s ordered expulsion. Kayupare says New Tribes has often helped Indian communities ravaged by malaria and other diseases, airlifting the sick to medical care after the government had abandoned them.

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Pat Robertson a “Key Figure”

Back in May the Colorado Springs Gazette broke a story which was picked up by the AP, who told us that:

The [Israeli] government has offered to donate 35 acres beside the Sea of Galilee for an evangelical Christian center to boost Christian tourism…

Now Haaretz reports that that plan is going ahead – and it appears to have grown more ambitious over the summer:

As part of the project, Israel will initially lease 125 acres (500 dunams) in the area between Capernaum, Tabgha and the Mount of Beatitudes. The idea: to build a center that will provide Christian believers with a sense that “Jesus lived here.” Some see the project as having great potential to attract pilgrims.

Actually, I was there a few years back and I saw plenty of Catholic churches and other signs of Christian presence. This plan, though, will be aimed at Christians more generally, although evangelicals will run the site:

And who is the group with whom the negotiations are underway? “We are talking about a broad group, and at its heart one of the key figures will be Pat Robertson,” says [Tourism Minister Abraham] Hirchson.

But back in May, it was Ted Haggard rather than Robertson who was in the limelight. To go back to the AP report:

The government told a group of evangelical leaders, including the Rev. Ted Haggard of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, it would be willing to improve a nearby airport and provide power, water and phone lines for the center…

Haggard called the land “priceless.”

“None of that land is for sale,” said Haggard, also president of the National Association of Evangelicals. “You could never buy it.”

Haggard provided a few extra details about his trip in an email, which has since been reposted around the internet (e.g. here):

…Yesterday a small team of Evangelical leaders (Sunday Adelaja from Kiev, Michael Little, President of CBN, Jay Sekulow from the Center for Law and Justice in Washington, Brian and Bobbie Houston from Hillsong in Sidney, Australia, and Dr. Brent Parsley from the great New Life Church in Colorado Springs, CO, USA) and myself spent just about three hours with Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Finance for Israel near/on the Sea of Galilee in Israel. Then we were in Jerusalem and in two hours we’re leaving to meet Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. These discussions are very important regarding Israel’s understanding and relationship with Evangelicals worldwide, and our relationship with Jewish people and Israel.

Sunday Adelaja has been featured on this blog before; his website features some photos from the event.

Haggard gave some further thoughts on the subject in July, in an interview with William Wallis:

Pastor Ted Haggard, president of the US National Evangelical Association which groups 22.5m Americans, said by phone from his New Life Church in Colorado Springs that with the right conditions 1m US Christians could be encouraged to visit Israel annually.

Mr Haggard, who met the Israeli prime minister and members of his cabinet on a recent trip to Jerusalem and is galvanising support for the Galilee project, said the government needed to cut red tape to allow more and cheaper flights into Israel. “When you have a package with a tour company, airline and hotel then you start to get prices in the range that the average tourist from Kansas can afford. Those are wonderful people. They want to go,” he said.

Asked about the Palestinians, Haggard added:

“The evangelical community is large and diverse, and the Palestinian community needs to know that evangelicals want life to be better for everybody,” he said. “I am a supporter of Ariel Sharon and I know what he is doing in the Gaza Strip is painful. But I am supportive of Palestinians getting a reasonable government concerned with building roads and schools rather than blowing up children. I have met with President Bush and told him how supportive I am.”

One wonders what Pat Robertson would make of that: back in October 2002 Robertson shared a platform with the then-tourist minister Benny Elon, whose calls for the expulsion of the Palestinians were met with cheers from a Christian Zionist audience in Washington D.C. (see here). Haggard, in contrast, is on record as supporting a two-state solution, although it is impossible to square that with his church’s “adoption” of the illegal settlement of Beit Haggai; I speculated back in July that Haggard was probably just following Sharon’s vague platitudes about a “final settlement”.

The proposed new centre is not without controversy. Back to Haaretz:

Opponents to the project, among them the chairman of the Yad L’achim organization, Rabbi Shalom Dov Lifschitz, who met with Tourism Minister Hirchson, argued that bitter experience with evangelicals leaves no doubt regarding their missionary activity.

Lifschitz is an thuggish character who appeared in this blog just last month, where he was boasting of his efforts at getting Israeli Christian alleged missionaries fired from their jobs. Haggard, though, sought to ally fears over missionary activities in July:

There is no single group that respects Orthodox Judaism more highly.” He added: “Wouldn’t those Orthodox believers love it if we could persuade more Muslims to become evangelicals?”

Well, Haggard knows they would, since in February 2004 Benny Elon urged evangelicals to do just that:

Israel Tourism Minister Benny Elon said Christian missionary groups should try to convert Muslims to Christianity “to show them the light,” but said Israel would not tolerate any attempts to convert Jews.

But while the Israeli government doles out chunks of the Galilee to American Christians, it should also be recalled that the region is the location of two largely Arab Christian villages, Barim and Ikrit. The residents of both towns were evacuated by the IDF back in 1948 as a temporary measure; nearly sixty years later, they’re still waiting to go home.

(Tipped from Christianity Today Weblog)

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Campus Watch uses Frontpage to launch another volley in its war against Columbia University, with a book review of Nadia El-Haj’s Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (2002). Over to Hugh Fitzgerald:

…this book is not really about archeology at all. Rather it is a relentless attack on how and why Israelis, Jews really, have done archaeology in the land they have the audacity to call Israel.

So could we have some sort of quote or extensive analysis to show that El-Haj’s complaints about Israeli archaeology are really attacks on Jews in general? Erm…nope. But moving on:

…There is not the slightest evidence that she has ever seen the work of Israeli archeologists, ever visited a dig, ever studied the history of the development of Israeli archeology, ever inquired as to how Israeli archeologists choose the sites they do choose for digs.

So maybe Fitzgerald can lay out exactly what El-Haj has to say, and then use his own knowledge of the above to put us straight. Erm…nope again.

…But to demonstrate a connection between Jews past and Jews present is unacceptable, an abuse of archaeology, serving the cause of a “construct,” a Western imperial falsehood. That is, a Jewish state.

If El-Haj really does deny the reality of ancient Jewish remains in Israel/Palestine, that would indeed be wacko – but again Fitzgerald offers up no substantiating quote. And if the modern State of Israel is not a “construct”, then what is it? Would “divinely-ordained organic unity of ethnicity and soil” be more to Fitzgerald’s liking?

…El-Haj seems to think that the study of the Jewish past by Israeli archeologists, observing the highest professional standards, known for the meticulousness, is an outrageous political act, an act of “Jewish settler-colonial nation state-building” (that phrase itself deserves analysis, for the hysterical confusion of its English).

“Seems to think” being code for “how I’ll reinterpret what she says to induce maximum apoplexy among wingnuts.”

…El-Haj’s political fulminations may attempt to hide behind the rhetoric of “scholarship.”

Whereas Fitzgerald’s fulminations don’t hide behind anything.

…Is there a single example of attempts by Israeli archeologists to either hide the past, or destroy the past, or to create a false past? If so, she has failed to mention it in her book.

So the fact she doesn’t make stuff up only shows how shabby she is! How low can you go? Well, Fitzgerald is about to answer that one:

As is well known, in Islam there has been an almost total indifference to the non-Islamic or pre-Islamic world. Many of the artifacts of that world have been destroyed over 1350 years of Muslim conquest and subjugation of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists…In Egypt, members of the Muslim Brotherhood even muttered about destroying the Pyramids, but cooler heads prevailed.

In other words, the only appropriate way to study Israeli archaeology is to compare its achievements against the less enlightened acts of medieval and fundamentalist Islam. And how can she ignore the fact that in the 1950s some people wanted to blow up the Pyramids after more than a thousand years of Islamic rule, just because it never actually happened?

But while Frontpage is so idiotic it can be dismissed (except as a threat to American academic life), a more serious (albeit flawed) review is provided by Aren M. Maeir of Bar Ilan University. This review has been reposted here, at Solomonia. Choice passages:

Alas, a detailed reading reveals that this book is a highly ideologically driven political manifesto, with a glaring lack of attention both to details and to the broader context.

…To start with, the topic of the book is not new. In the last decade or so, there have been quite a few attempts to study the role of archaeology in Israeli society. Much of what Nadia Abu el-Haj writes is a repetition of these themes. She is aware of some of these previous studies, but she has missed quite a few as well.

That’s more interesting, although a chance to discuss how these studies relate to al-Haj’s is passed over.

Although archaeology in Israel has been misused for nationalist purposes during the twentieth century, this is now a thing of the past. In contemporary Israel, mainstream archaeology-and most of the rest of society-attaches little or no importance to the political and historical underpinnings of archaeological interpretation. If one looks at archaeological thought and interpretation in contemporary Israel, only marginal elements act in accordance or identify with the nonscientific agendas that she attempts to delineate.

OK, to an extent – and Maeir at least acknowledges an area of which Fitzgerald appears to be ignorant. It’s certainly true that an archaeological establishment which puts nationalism rather than science at its centre would not have allowed the development of “minimalist” archaeologists such as Israel Finklestein, who seriously undermine large parts of the Biblical narrative. The fact that the Israel Antiquities Authority has denied digging permits to the likes of Vendyl Jones, even though he has received backing from the Israeli religious right, is also encouraging.

But serious concerns clearly remain. For example, Maeir might want to have a word with his Bar-Ilan colleague Gabriel Barkay, who was recently reported in the Jerusalem Post as having found a First Temple period seal impression. The report noted that

The seal, which predates the destruction of the First Jewish temple in 586 BCE, was presented Tuesday night to the press at an archaeological conference at the City of David sponsored by the right-wing Elad organization.

Here’s a bit more on Elad, from The Guardian in 2004:

…Elad, the City of David Foundation, which is excavating King David’s palace and some of the homes of the thousands of Israelites who once lived around it.

“The goal of our organisation is to increase the presence of Jews in the neighbourhood as much as possible,” said Elad’s director, Doron Spielman. “We’ve been dreaming of coming back to biblical Jerusalem for 3,000 years. This is the fulfilment of our dreams. We cannot trust that if this is an Arab neighbourhood, Jews will be safe to walk around here.”

Elad says it has bought up 42 homes so far in legal transactions which have been upheld by the courts when they are disputed. The Palestinians say that Elad is responsible for ethnic cleansing by stealth through the seizure and occupation of property or duping the vulnerable into signing papers they do not understand.

These events developed into the Silwan homes demolition controversy, which I blogged on in June. Is that sort of sponsorship really appropriate for scientists? Is a conference organised by such a group really the right place to announce significant archaeological finds? Or is Maeir’s colleague one of those “marginal elements”?

There’s also the question of how archaeologists relate to the military occupation in the West Bank. Just recently, Kevin Chamberlain (UCL lecturer in Cultural Property Law) made observations about archaeological sites in the Occupied Territories (emphasis added):

When a site is uncovered the Israelis institute a ‘salvage excavation,’ i.e. the rapid removal and recording of artefacts before the site is covered up. In most cases this results in the destruction of the site, although occasionally the site is covered up but not destroyed for future investigation, e.g. in the case of an important mosaic floor. Nevertheless the effect of these ‘salvage excavations’ is that the all-important context of the site is destroyed and the knowledge that it yields is lost forever. Such excavations fall under the authority of the archaeological staff officer, who is an officer of the Civil Administration (i.e. the Israeli military).

Should archaeologists really lend their professional reputations to this sort of thing? [UPDATE: Paleojudaica offers a critique of Chamberlain’s article here.]

But let’s return to Maeir’s review. Maeir also takes issue with El-Haj’s understanding of archaeological methods (such as carbon dating), and he derides some of her (admittedly peculiar) interpretations of certain archaeological evidence. However, Maeir then launches into a rather more problematic rant:

Not only is her lack of attention to the ongoing misuse of archaeological interpretation elsewhere in the Middle East quite surprising; the lack of reference to similar patterns in various Western and non-Western countries is inexplicable.

Well, inexplicable if you haven’t read the title. This is the old line of “criticism of Israel is only allowed if preceded with long enumerations of the sins of Arabs”, which we’ve already seen from Fitzgerald. Further:

Perhaps the most astonishing part of the book is a discussion on the last page of the text (p. 281). Abu el-Haj describes and condones the attack, and subsequent ransacking, by a Palestinian mob on what is known as “Jacob’s Tomb” in Nablus in 2001. Several people were killed as a result of this attack; the gleeful tone in which she describes this act of vandalism exemplifies how her political agenda completely overcame her duties as a social scientist.

Even Fitzgerald seems to have missed this alleged “glee”. He writes only that:

…Even El-Haj had to mention the matter in her book (knowing that if she omitted it altogether, reviewers might notice), but she justified it as the uncharacteristic, but understandable reaction of desperate people, brought to the end of their collective tether by the diabolical behavior of the Israelis.

If El-Haj has really skewed her scholarship for the benefit of a political ideology, then her work deserves to be pulled apart. But the above reviews, with biases and agendas of their own, fail to convince. In Fitzgerald’s case, I assume that he and his fellow Campus Watch clowns are now so drunk on the power of intimidation that they don’t even feel the need to write something even half-reasonably thought through.

Meanwhile, a more balanced review is available here from Jacob Lassner.

(Tipped from Biblical Theology. Some links via Paleojudacia, Bible and Interpretation)

UPDATE: Commentator Diana notes more detailed complaints against El-Haj from Solomonia, and directs readers to here. Further thoughts from me can be found after her comment.

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An interesting religious battle in Ghana, from Graphic Ghana:

There was drama at Okornya, a suburb of Somanya, last Thursday when a well-known evangelist of the Assemblies of God Church, was charmed by a fetish priestess popularly called Okornya Maku.

…On that fateful day, the priestess welcomed the evangelist to her home once again and they engaged in Bible discussions.

An argument ensued between the two over the interpretation of some parts of the Bible and Okornya Maku who used to be a Presbyterian also quoted several scriptures to buttress what she was saying.

She entered her shrine and came out reciting the Apostles’ Creed and speaking in a strange language.

She then ordered Evangelist Bless to go down on his knees and he meekly complied behaving like a child and shivering.

Okornya Maku has been in the news before (From the Ghanaian Chronicle in 2003; ref via The Pagan Prattle). The story concerned a 72-year old woman, Yobiyo Larko, who admitted to being a witch and dipping a two-year old child in a stream to “cure” him:

…her confession was made to another woman, a popular soothsayer and fetish priestess, in a nearby village. Okornya Maku, the fetish priestess, after speaking with Larko, declared that Larko had killed several people, including a young set of triplets who had died that same week.

The role of fetish priests, also known as soothsayers, in the identification and punishment of self-proclaimed witches is largely ignored in Ghana.

That may be so, but in 2004 the government’s National Reconciliation Commission produced a report which featured a chapter on religious bodies and human rights; the issue of fetish priests and witches is discussed there (pdf). The Ghanaian Chronicle also gives a description of Okornya Maku:

It’s an ordinary day at Okornya Maku’s shrine, house number C 303/3 at Somanya, in the Eastern Region, and the compound is filled to capacity with people, as well as strange portraits, sculptures, carvings and paintings. Stains of fresh blood lead the way from the entrance to the inner perimeter of the compound.

Maku stands confidently and elegantly. She is tall and dark, with a piercing pair of eyes and a powerful voice. She covers her body with hundreds of beads, chains, trinkets, bracelets, rings and other heavy ornaments…

(Beads are apparently Somanya’s main industry, and are connected with status)

…She wears her hair in natural dreadlocks, either dangling around her waist or wrapped in headgear. Instead of drinking water from pipes, she drinks rain or stream water, which she calls “holy water.”

“My powers were given to me from God. I don’t spill human blood. I only cleanse society of evil,” she stresses.

A licensed practitioner and government-accredited soothsayer, Maku says she has been practising for over 40 years. She also insists that she is a Christian. To prove it, she recites the Apostles’ Creed.

The religious life of Somanya was featured in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette back in 2002. Ervin Dyer reported that town had a population of 8,000, and 60 churches. Among these, African Independent Churches (AICs) are burgeoning:

In African Independent Churches, it is not uncommon to see carved wooden stools, traditional seats of sovereignty for African royalty, and animal-skin rugs, local symbols of power and authority, as part of the pulpit. Libation, a centuries-old practice of honoring ancestors, is as much a part of some independent worship as electric guitars, keyboards and hymns. Polygamy, animal sacrifices and African occult are practiced by some congregations.

…The major dividing line between mainline and independent churches seems to be faith healing, the practice of curing physical illnesses by exorcising demons. Popular and accepted by the independents — where congregations believe that malevolent spirits can cause sickness — most mainline churches shun healings as fetish, a practice too closely tied to witchcraft.

Dyer profiles Joyce Dauty, an independent and illiterate prophetess who regularly receives messages from God.

So what of the hapless “Evangelist Bless”? Graphic Ghana gives further details:

In an interview with the Rite FM station he said, he had been a seasoned evangelist but what happened to him was a mystery.

He said even though that was the fourth time he went to Okornya Maku’s house with the intention of converting her to Christianity, he had never had such an opposing force which made him to succumb.

A bit different from the usual narrative, in which intrepid evangelists confound the adherents of traditional religion (e.g. here). But one wonders how well Okornya Maku might fare against an opponent who doesn’t share her supernaturalist assumptions. Over the border, in Nigeria, there’s a man named Leo Igwe, who heads both the Nigerian Humanist Movement and the Nigerian Skeptics Society. Commenting on shrines in Nigeria in 2004, Igwe

…stressed the need for the federal Government to support science-based education instead of superstition-based instruction and religious indoctrination.

“We enjoin all Nigerians to abandon Pseudo-science and embrace science, to leave occultic non-sense and cultivate rational inquiry, critical thinking and technological intelligence so that Nigeria can grow”, Mr. Igwe said.

Ghana, meanwhile, apparently has “government-accredited” soothsayers…

(Tipped from Bulldada Newsblog)

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As Franklin Graham plans “spiritual rebirth” in New Orleans, Charisma reports on the progress of one evangelist in the afflicted Gulf of Mexico (link added):

Evangelist Johnny Jernigan has been neck-deep in storm recovery since Hurricane Katrina smashed the Gulf Coast more than a month ago. But besides delivering food to needy families and helping evacuees reclaim their damaged homes, he has been leading hundreds of people to Christ—people who weren’t open to the gospel before the disaster.

…Shortly after the storm hit, Jernigan took his portable ministry tent to Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a shrimping community with a heavily Cambodian and Vietnamese population. One night, 37 people—including many Buddhists—made professions of faith in Christ during the makeshift worship service.

“I see an open door to reach these communities right now like never before,” Jernigan says. “By serving them, we earn the right to preach to them a message of hope in the pain they face.”

The response of local Asians (who make up 33% of Bayou La Batre) to the hurricane has been reported in the Mobile Register; according to the San Francisco Chronicle, no-one from the town was killed or injured, thanks to forward planning. However:

The most disquieting question for residents is whether the maritime economy can recover. Dozens of shrimp boats were scooped out of their moorings and hurled onto shore, and the entire support infrastructure — dry docks, workshops, marinas, offices — suffered severe damage. No one even wants to estimate the cost of repair.

Johnny Jernigan Ministries is a partner of PRC Compassion, which is co-ordinating the relief efforts of conservative churches in Louisiana (although Jernigan and Bayou La Batre are in Alabama). As I blogged just recently, PRC is a division of the Pastors Resource Council, which was set up by the Louisiana Family Forum to engage in “culture war” on behalf of “family values”; the group has close ties to the Family Research Council‘s Tony Perkins.

Jernigan, who is a minister with the Assemblies of God, specialises in youth evangelism and door-to-door evangelism, a technique he calls the “100-Man Challenge“:

John Wesley said, “Give me 100 men who want nothing but God and hate nothing but sin and I will bring God back in my generation.”  Week after week, I have witnessed Christians accepting the challenge to do something rarely done at the local level, to move out of the sheep field and onto the battlefield.  With as few as 125-200 people, we have knocked on the doors of as many as 10,000 homes in one day, cleaned parking lots, washed cars, hosted children’s carnival, done park outreaches and parking lot ministry, all in a SERVANT evangelism approach.

The communities stand in awe as they witness churches willing to serve while asking nothing in return. The results of this effort are staggering. Visitors are pouring into the churches after these intensive weekends.

(Jernigan evidently works his troops harder than he used to. An older cached version of the same spiel is slightly different: “With 125-200 teens, we have knocked on the doors of as many as 4,000 homes in one week”). According to his bio, Jernigan has also undertaken crusades in “Central America, Africa and Russia”.

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Once again, classical CD producer Naxos amazes with its infinitely-expanding catalogue. Naxos brings cheap but high-quality CDs to the public, using mainly East European orchestras, and doing for classical music what the paperback revolution did for books years ago. But not only are the standard “classics” well-represented: every month a batch of new releases introduces whole new vistas of composers and compositions that deserve to be better-known, both ancient and modern. In August I particularly enthused over Sergio Rendine’s folk passion-piece, Passio et Resurrectio; this month, I have been glad to discover Akira Ifukube.

Ifukube was born 1914 and was largely self-taught in the hills of Hokkaido. His influences include Stravinsky and traditional Ainu dance music, and he came to prominence in his early twenties with his Japanese Rhapsody, which won a competition and was appreciated by Sibelius. His ouput since then has been diverse and prolific, and includes over 300 film scores. His Symphonic Fantasia No.1 draws on some of his most famous: in particular, Godzilla.

Click here for more.

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