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The Weekly is a highlight of the work the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission is doing to strengthen you and our churches for God’s glory.
State Department Hosts a First-Ever Ministerial on Religious Freedom
Earlier this week the State Department joined with government officials, religious leaders and human rights advocates for the first-ever Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. The three-day event was convened to discuss challenges and identify concrete means to “push back against persecution and discrimination, and ensure greater respect for religious freedom for all.”
The conference included 350 participants from 80 countries and represented a variety of religious believers, including Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Baha’is, and Yazidis.
“We were as inclusive as possible because we wanted to include everyone of every faith or no faith at all, everyone who cares about religious freedom and who will join us in this cause,” said Sam Brownback, the former Kansas governor and senator who now serves as the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. “Religious freedom really, truly is for everyone. It’s a right given by God and it’s a beautiful part of our human dignity.”
This Week at the ERLC
There is so much talk lately about technology and its perils and promise. Jason Thacker, our creative director, has been thinking deeply about these issues for some time. Which is why we are excited to release a brand new ebook about technology, the future, and how Christians can walk in wisdom.
We’re encouraged by some important conversations happening around race in local communities. This week, our president Russell Moore joined local pastor Ed Litton and civil rights legend John Perkins for a special event called Shrink the Divide: A Gathering for Racial Reconciliation in Mobile, Alabama.
Trillia Newbell, our director of community outreach, will discuss practical ways Christians can better reflect God's heart on the issue of race at an event called Faith & Law at the U.S. Capitol building. There will be 100-150 congressional staffers there to hear her talk, “Loving Our Neighbor and the Race-Transcending Gospel.”
What You Need to Know
In new piece titled, “How Push Notifications Are Changing Our Lives”, author and TGC editor, Brett McCracken warns Christians against the tyranny of the urgent:
"Indeed, one of the great perils of the smartphone is its capacity for destructive distraction: drawing our attention in a thousand different directions when our priority should be on the proximate people and local problems in front of us."
Sometimes it is hard for Christians to understand our role in both obeying laws and shaping laws. That’s why this video from Steven Harris, ERLC director of advocacy is so helpful. Steven says:
"Christians need to sensitive to the ways in which an unjust criminal justice system undermines the very values and ethics Christians seek to instill and commend in the culture."
News From Capitol Hill
The ERLC policy team in Washington focused on international religious freedom efforts this week. The team participated in the first-ever Ministerial at the U.S. Department of State, co-hosted an event at the U.S. Capitol building with the Religious Freedom Institute and Boat People SOS on Lessons from Southeast Asia: State and Non-State Threats to Religious Freedom, and released a new short film as part of an advocacy effort in Malaysia. Travis Wussow, ERLC vice president of public policy and general counsel said of the events:
“This week is a call to persons of peace to join together to advance religious freedom for all. We are encouraged how the Ministerial evidenced the work of Ambassador Brownback and his team of dedicated public servants to raise the profile of religious freedom as a foreign policy priority of the United States. We were glad to continue the conversation on issues in Southeast Asia and pray that the efforts of our coalition lead to greater religious freedom in a Malaysia for all Malaysians.”
The film, Malaysia: A Fight for Freedom and Identity, details individual stories of our brothers and sisters in Christ and other religious minorities and is available to view here.
For more on the Ministerial:
Featured ERLC Podcast
If you are a fan of The Way Home Podcast with Dan Darling you’ll like this new series on human dignity. You can listen to the first episode with the president of World Vision, Rich Stearns, who reflects on 20 years of leading the world’s largest Christian humanitarian organization.
From the public square
Black Millennials are more religious than other Millennials
Jeff Diamant and Besheer Mohamed, Pew Research
About six-in-ten black Millennials (61%) say they pray at least daily, a significantly higher share than the 39% of nonblack Millennials saying this. And while 38% of black Millennials say they attend religious services at least weekly, just a quarter (25%) of other Millennials do this, according to the analysis based on data from the Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study.
Africa is now the world’s epicenter of modern-day slavery
Abdi Latif Dahir, Quartz
Africa just recorded the highest rate of modern-day enslavement in the world. Armed conflict, state-sponsored forced labor, and forced marriages were the main causes behind the estimated 9.2 million Africans who live in servitude without the choice to do so, according to the 2018 Global Slavery Index.
Study: U.S. Churches Exclude Children with Autism, ADD/ADHD
David Briggs, Christianity Today
America’s religious communities are failing children with chronic health conditions such as autism, learning disabilities, depression, and conduct disorders. And they have been doing it for a very long time, suggests a just-published national study following three waves of the National Survey of Children’s Health.
From Termination to Extermination: The International Down Syndrome Genocide
David F. Forte, Public Discourse
Estimates vary, but in the United States, abortions of children whose Down syndrome is detected in the womb are in the range of about 67 percent. The lethal discrimination practiced against such persons has become a worldwide phenomenon.
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