Ask Mormons if they are Christian, and their answer often starts with a sigh.

Look at our name, they’ll say, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Read The Book of Mormon’s subtitle, “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” Examine our Articles of Faith, “We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved…”

“When we read in the press that some religious person who should know better refers to us as non-Christian, it is baffling to us,” said Michael Otterson, the church’s head of public affairs. “To suggest that we don’t embrace Christ and his sacrifice for all of us is insulting.”

Yet nearly a quarter of Americans remain unconvinced, according to a recent poll conducted by The Salt Lake Tribune. The Vatican and several Protestant churches do not accept Mormon baptisms as legitimate (neither do Mormons recognize theirs), and some conservative evangelicals call Mormonism a “cult.” Mormons, meanwhile, believe they belong to the one true Christian church.

The theological debate might have remained relegated to Sunday school discussions and interfaith summits were it not for the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon and onetime LDS bishop. While the former Massachusetts governor and current GOP frontrunner has muted religious talk during this campaign, he indirectly addressed the Mormon-Christian issue during his previous White House bid.

“There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked,” he said in a 2007 speech in Texas. “What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind.”

Stressing the similarities between Mormonism and mainstream Christianity makes political sense. Republicans who say Mormons are not Christian are less likely to view Romney favorably or support his campaign, according to a November survey by the nonpartisan Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

During the 2007 speech, Romney acknowledged that “my church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths.” But explaining theological arcana is not a politician’s job, he argued. It amounts to a religious test for office, which the Constitution forbids.

Still, the debate lingers around Romney’s campaign: Are he and fellow Mormons Christians? The question seems simple enough, but the answer is quite complicated.

Who’s in and Who’s Out?

According to “The Atlas of Global Christianity,” there are 41,000 Christian denominations. No definition of Christianity could encompass their doctrinal diversity, said Martin Marty, an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School. “I wish there was some official place where you could determine who’s in and who’s out, but there’s not. No one can speak for all of Christianity in all its nuances.”

The atlas lists Mormonism as a “marginal” Christian group, along with Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, primarily because it deviates from traditional Christian teachings on Jesus and claims sources of revelation beyond the Bible.

The “marginal” category is not a perfect fit and rings a pejorative tone, said Todd Johnson, editor of the atlas and director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Seminary. “It’s not a category that helps you understand what these groups believe. It’s just saying that they have something besides the Bible that is quite significant.”

For centuries, most Christians have relied a closed canon of scriptures and creeds to draw the circle of membership. Catholics, Anglicans, Eastern Orthodox Christians and many Protestant churches recite the 4th Century Nicene Creed, for example, which states foundational Christian tenets.

Mormonism’s founding prophet, Joseph Smith, blasted the Christian canon wide open and cast aside the creeds. At a time when religious revivals engulfed his Upstate New York homestead, a 14-year-old Smith reported a vision of God and Jesus, who told him that the Christian churches had fallen into apostasy.

A second vision directed Smith to a stack of buried golden plates, according to LDS Church history. The plates, which became The Book of Mormon, told of an ancient society visited by Jesus in North America that was destroyed by warring tribes.

With the impatience of a prophet, Smith set out to restore the Christian church. He revised the Bible; reported receiving “keys to the priesthood” from John the Baptist; rejected the traditional idea of the Trinity as three-gods-in-one; taught that God was once a flesh-and-blood man, and that men could become gods through purification and obedience to the church.

They were all — including Smith’s promotion as Prophet of the Restoration — radical departures from centuries of Christian orthodoxy. And intentionally so.

Smith’s Latter-day Saints consider The Book of Mormon as much a part of God’s word as the Bible, and continue to honor their top leader as “prophet, seer and revelator.”

“Take away the Book of Mormon and the revelations,” Smith said, “and where is our religion? We have none.”

The Fourth Abrahamic Faith?

Jan Shipps, the preeminent non-Mormon expert on the LDS church, draws a comparison between the early Christians and Latter-day Saints. Both introduced new scriptures and ideas to established religions, and insisted that their new faith fulfilled the old. Christians added the New Testament to Judaism, and Smith added The Book of Mormon to Christianity.

Richard Land, an ethicist with the Southern Baptist Convention, goes even further, calling Mormonism “the fourth Abrahamic faith,” after Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Like Islam, Land said, Mormons receive the Old and New Testament as sacred texts, but not as the final divine word. Like Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, Smith is considered an authoritative vessel of God’s word.

“Whatever it is, Mormonism is not Christianity,” Land said. “They do not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, they do not believe in God the Father as he is recognized in the orthodox Christian faith, and they believe that ‘As man now is, God was once.’ The only thing right about that sentence from the orthodox Christian perspective is the punctuation.”

Evangelicals like Land tend to be the most eager to keep Mormons from the Christian camp. In addition to doctrinal concerns, Johnson said, conservative Christians worry about sheep-stealing Mormon missionaries. “It’s a pragmatic decision to call (Mormons) non-Christian, to protect church members from Mormon evangelism,” he said.

But even Catholics and more liberal Protestants, such as the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Methodist Church, do not consider Mormon baptisms valid.

“The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, by self-definition, does not fit within the bounds of the historic, apostolic tradition of Christian faith,” the Methodists wrote in 2000.

Cherishing Mormon Distinctiveness

Mormons do not deny their differences with traditional Christianity. According to a recent survey, Mormons are as likely to say their religion resembles Judaism as it does evangelical Protestantism.

Otterson says Mormons cherish their distinctiveness, much as Catholics or Methodists show special devotion to their traditions. But Mormon leaders have also sought to tie their unique theology to the earliest Christians, using the ancient past to sanction the present.

For example, arguing that Mormons are not Christians because they do not recite the Nicene Creed would leave Jesus and his disciples outside the Christian fold as well, argues Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, a member of the LDS Church’s Quorum of Twelve Apostles. And, Holland says, the idea of a flesh-and-blood God should not sound strange to Christians, who, after all, believe in the bodily birth and resurrection of Jesus.

Christians who insist on a single, closed canon forget that Catholics and Protestants use different versions of the Bible, argues Stephen Robinson, a professor of religion at Mormon-run Brigham Young University in Utah. And didn’t differing interpretations of the Trinity contribute to the Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches in 1054?

Mormon theologian Robert Millet has been laboring to convince Christians that the Mormon idea of deification — humans becoming gods — resembles the mystical union with the divine taught by early church fathers like St. Augustine. But Millet said he worries more about the opinions of Christians in the pews than the specialized scholars who read his books.

“When people call Mormons non-Christian, they might believe that we do not accept Jesus Christ as Lord and savior, or believe in the New Testament,” Millet said. “We don’t want to fight about this. We just wish people would get it right.”

Question: “What happens to those who have never heard about Jesus?”

Answer: All people are accountable to God whether or not they have “heard about Him.” The Bible tells us that God has clearly revealed Himself in nature (Romans 1:20) and in the hearts of people (Ecclesiastes 3:11). The problem is that the human race is sinful; we all reject this knowledge of God and rebel against Him (Romans 1:21-23). If it were not for God’s grace, we would be given over to the sinful desires of our hearts, allowing us to discover how useless and miserable life is apart from Him. He does this for those who continually reject Him (Romans 1:24-32).

In reality, it is not that some people have not heard about God. Rather, the problem is that they have rejected what they have heard and what is readily seen in nature. Deuteronomy 4:29proclaims, “But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.” This verse teaches an important principle—everyone who truly seeks after God will find Him. If a person truly desires to know God, God will make Himself known.

The problem is “there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God” (Romans 3:11). People reject the knowledge of God that is present in nature and in their own hearts, and instead decide to worship a “god” of their own creation. It is foolish to debate the fairness of God sending someone to hell who never had the opportunity to hear the gospel of Christ. People are responsible to God for what God has already revealed to them. The Bible says that people reject this knowledge, and therefore God is just in condemning them to hell.

Instead of debating the fate of those who have never heard, we, as Christians, should be doing our best to make sure they do hear. We are called to spread the gospel throughout the nations (Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 1:8). We know people reject the knowledge of God revealed in nature, and that must motivate us to proclaim the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. Only by accepting God’s grace through the Lord Jesus Christ can people be saved from their sins and rescued from an eternity apart from God.

If we assume that those who never hear the gospel are granted mercy from God, we will run into a terrible problem. If people who never hear the gospel are saved, it is logical that we should make sure no one ever hears the gospel. The worst thing we could do would be to share the gospel with a person and have him or her reject it. If that were to happen, he or she would be condemned. People who do not hear the gospel must be condemned, or else there is no motivation for evangelism. Why run the risk of people possibly rejecting the gospel and condemning themselves when they were previously saved because they had never heard the gospel?

Recommended Resource:  What About Those Who Have Never Heard?: Three Views on the Destiny of the Unevangelized (Spectrum Multiview Book Series Spectrum Multiview Book Serie)

Book review: Quitter

Author: Jon Acuff

1. What do I love enough to do for free?
2. What do I do that causes time to feel different?
3. What do I enjoy doing regardless of the opinions of other people?
4. If only your life changed, would that be enough?
5. Are there any patterns in the things you like doing?

• Why you shouldn’t quit your day job.
• What is keeping you from finding your dream job.
• Falling “in like” with a job you don’t love.
• How to hustle for a better job.
• How to be successful at success.
• How to quit your day job.

Originally posted here.

An overwhelming majority of Americans believe the Bible is either the inspired or actual word of God, a Gallup poll revealed recently.

The Gallup poll which was taken from May 5 – 8 surveyed 1,018 adult respondents, aged 18 or older, from all 50 U.S. states.

The poll divided respondents into three categories, namely:

• Those who believe the Bible is inspired by God, but do not believe it should be interpreted literally.
• Those who believe the Bible is the actual word of God and who interpret it literally.
• Those who don’t believe the Bible is God’s word, and who consider it a collection of legends and fables written and compiled by men.

Up to 79 percent of Americans either believe the Bible is inspired by God (49 percent), or believe it is the actual word of God (30 percent) and adhere to a literal interpretation of the Holy Book.

Only 17 percent of respondents said they believe the Bible is a collection of fables and legends.

Overall biblical view

Overall, the largest percentage of Americans view the Bible as God inspired (49 percent). This is up by four percent from 1977 (45 percent).

Bible literalists, at 30 percent, have retained consistent numbers in the last two decades since 1992 (at 32 percent) to the present. The lowest percentage of literalists was in 2001 (27 percent).

However, today’s percentage of Bible literalists today is 10 percentage points less than in the 1980s (at 40 percent); and eight percent less than in the 1970s (at 38 percent).

Biblical view and frequency of church attendance 

A pattern was indicated regarding churchgoing habits and biblical view. Regular, weekly churchgoers are largely either biblical literalists (54 percent) or view the Bible as God inspired (41 percent).

Most of the people who go to church on a monthly or bimonthly basis tend to believe the Bible is inspired by God (66 percent). Only a few are literalists (22 percent).

Non churchgoers and rare attendees mostly believe the Bible is inspired by God (46 percent), while a smaller percentage of non churchgoers believe the Bible is a collection of legends (34 percent). Only 16 percent are literalists.

Biblical view and educational level

There is also a link seen between level of education attained and biblical view. The percentage of literalists tends to decline as educational levels rise. Most literalists have only finished high school or less (46 percent), while some have had some college (22 percent). The percentage of literalists is almost the same among those with college degrees (15 percent) and those with postgraduate degrees (16 percent).

The percentage of those who believe the Bible is God inspired is highest among those with college degrees (64 percent); and almost equal among those with postgraduate degrees (55 percent) and those with only some college (56 percent).

The percentage of those who believe the Bible is a collection of fables is highest among those with postgraduate degrees (25 percent). The numbers are the same for those with college degrees and those with only some college (19 percent).

Biblical view and church denomination

Among Protestants and Christian denominations the numbers seem to be closely split between literalists (41 percent) and those who say the Bible is God inspired (46 percent).

Most Catholics believe the Bible is inspired by God (65 percent), followed by Catholic literalists (21 percent) and those who see it as a collection of legends (9 percent).

Most people with no religion believe the Bible is a book of legends (63 percent), followed by those who see it as God inspired (30 percent). Only five percent are literalists.

Biblical view and political affiliation

All three political parties largely believe the Bible is inspired by God, with Republicans leading (at 51 percent), followed by Independents (50 percent) and Democrats (46 percent).

The second most prevalent biblical view group for all three parties is Bible literalists led by Republicans (42 percent), followed by Democrats (27 percent) and Independents (23 percent).

More Democrats (25 percent) view the Bible as a collection of legends compared to Independents (21 percent) and Republicans (six percent).

Biblical view and ideology

Conservatives tend to be equally split among literalists (46 percent) and those who believe the Bible is inspired by God (45 percent). Most moderates (55 percent) and liberals (48 percent) consider the Bible to be God inspired.

More liberals adhere to the belief that the Bible is a collection of legends (31 percent) compared to the percentage of liberal literalists (14 percent).

Among moderates, there are more literalists (23 percent) than those who view the Bible as a collection of fables (20 percent).

Significance

Overall, most Americans still believe that the Bible is the actual word of God, whether they adhere to a literal interpretation of the Bible or view it to be inspired by God. This is consistent with the general view that America is largely a Christian nation and that most Americans believe in God.

Archeological digs in Gath have uncovered new findings that reveal information about the life of the Philistines, who are often mentioned in the Bible as the enemies of the Israelites.

Some of the findings include:

•  Several Philistine earthenware vessels up to 3,000 years old, including a painted shard of a jug with a black spiral and reddish frame, a common ancient Grecian design which hints of the Aegean origin of the Philistines.
• Ancient bones showing that aside from a main diet of grass pea lentils, the Philistines also ate dogs and pigs—animals which the Israelites considered unclean, and which are still restricted in the Jewish diet.
• Traces of 9th-century destruction in the city including a dark line across hills which indicate that a protective wall was probably built that surrounded the city. The Book of Kings in the Bible tells of King Hazael who, in 830 B.C., razed the city to the ground.
• The remains of a large structure with two pillars, possibly of a temple, similar to that described in the Biblical Book of Judges which Samson shattered when he broke through his shackles, bringing the temple down. Maeir says the structure might be an accepted design for Philistine temples at that time.
•     * Shards with names akin to Goliath, indicating that the Philistines used this name, and supporting the geopolitical milieu of the period as described in the Bible.

Diggings in Gath have been conducted annually since 1996 under Aren Maeir, co-director of the Bar-Ilan University/Weizmann Institute of Science Joint Program in Archaeological Science.

Some 100 diggers are involved in this year’s summer excavation project. They come from various countries including the U.S.,Canada and South Korea. The project will be ongoing until July 29.

Gath is extremely significant because it has plentiful material which reveals compelling details about the life of the Philistines in the 9th and 10th centuries B.C., Seymour Gitin, director of W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, told the AP.

“Gath fills a very important gap in our understanding of Philistine history,” because of its “wonderful assemblage of material culture.”

Gath, once a sprawling city in southern Israel, occupies land that today is known as the Gaza Strip.

The Philistines, who reached Gath in 1200 B.C., came from land that today is called Greece. The diggings show that even 500 years after landing in Gath, they still worshiped gods bearing Greek names. At the same time, the Philistines absorbed facets of the local culture of their new-found land.
The most famous Philistine in the Bible is Goliath, mentioned in the book of Samuel as the giant who was felled by David, a young shepherd and who later became king.

A new book says that in the post-war era, Gen. Douglas MacArthur perceived a “spiritual vacuum” in Japan and tried to fill it with spiritual beliefs, including Christianity and  Freemasonry.

In the book, 1945 Under the Shadow of the Occupation: The Ashlar and The Cross, authored by Eiichiro Tokumoto, the Japanese investigative journalist said that MacArthur, who then held absolute authority over Japan, believed that faith would help to offset communism, which in the early days of the cold war was gaining popularity, ENI News said.

Tokumoto based his contention on documents that were recently released to the public, that indicate that MacArthur tried to convince missionaries to intensify efforts in Japan, and even suggested mass conversions of the Japanese people to the Roman Catholic faith, according to ENI News.

General loss of faith

At that period, MacArthur observed that the Japanese people were experiencing a general lack of faith in many things. The Japanese military lost its nationalistic image of invincibility, the emperor had surrendered, and the state Shinto belief, which had been adhered to for several millennia, was being blamed for their defeat in 1945, ENI News said.

“MacArthur was very interested in the relationship between politics and religion in Japan, and he wanted both to reform the ideas and the ideology of the Japanese people as well as [make] sure that communism did not fill the gap in people’s minds and hearts,” Tokumoto wrote, according to ENI News.

Documents

Among the documents that Tokumoto referred to in his book is the report of a meeting that MacArthur held in 1946 with American Catholic bishops John F. O’Hara and Michael J. Ready.

The bishops toured Japan for three weeks and met with political, religious leaders and members of the imperial family. Afterwards, the bishops said in a report to the Vatican that MacArthur was suggesting that the Catholic Church try to convert the Japanese people en masse.

MacArthur wanted Catholic missionaries to work on this immediately and told the bishops that he estimated that they had one year window to accomplish this.

Absolution appeal

MacArthur felt that Catholicism would appeal to the Japanese. He based this belief on his experience when he was working in the Philippines. He also believed that the Catholic tradition of absolution would appeal to Japanese culture, which has a tradition of accepting responsibility for one’s misdeeds and seeking to make amends (the samurai warriors did this through ritual suicide).

MacArthur also spoke to Cardinal Norman Gilroy of Australia the following year in December 1946. A report to the Vatican from Gilroy stated that MacArthur believed it was imperative that the church act immediately, or “Communist agents will obtain the converts who should be gained by the church,” according to ENI News.

MacArthur’s interest in bringing Christianity to Japan lasted even up to 1955 when the International Christian University was established in Tokyo. MacArthur served as chairman of fundraising. Garett Washington of Oberlin College in Ohio said, “It was another place that could legally teach and protect Christianity,” ENI News reported.

MacArthur’s efforts did reap results. The number of Catholics in Japan went up by 19 percent from 1948 to 1950, and in some bookstores the bible was a bestseller. However, the success did not last because most of the missionaries who came to Japan couldn’t speak the language.

In the 1960s, students in Japan came to consider Christians as “elitist,” as they were leading a number of universities and businesses. Overall the Japanese felt disillusioned with all faiths. Shintoism, they believed, led to their defeat in 1945. Christians were viewed as “hypocritical.”

However, Freemasonry met with more success, attracting members from the Japanese Diet or parliament, journals and members of the royal family.

Sources:

http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-06/book-details-macarthurs-efforts-fill-japanese-spiritual-vacuum-after-world-war-ii

http://blog.beliefnet.com/news/2011/06/book-says-macarthur-flooded-japan-with-post-war-religion.php#ixzz1OIhgwHVI

A book was released recently by Christian author that talks
about religious abuse and offers an 11-step program of recovery from it.

Jack Watts, author of Recovering from Religious Abuse: 11
Steps to Spiritual Freedom, says that although clergy sexual abuse has received
wide media attention, what is less spoken of, and barely acknowledged by the
church, is religious abuse, The Christian Post said.

Watts told The Christian Post that religious abuse involves
“the mistreatment of a person by someone in a position of spiritual authority,
resulting in the diminishing of that person’s sense of well-being and growth –
both spiritually and emotionally.”

Religious abuse also involves “misuse of Scripture that
harms a person’s relationship with God,” Watts told The Christian Post, adding,
“Probably the best definition of religious abuse is if you feel like you have
been abused, you have, [and] millions say they have been.”

More
prevalent, less identified

Watts told The Christian Post that verbal and emotional
abuse in the church is more prevalent, but less often identified, than sexual
abuse. In his website, he describes it as oftentimes more rooted in a
legalistic approach to the gospel. It takes a heavy toll on its victims.

Watts says in his website, “Most abused Christian’s lead
half-lives, consumed with anger, bitterness, shame, and disillusionment. They
question whether the best years of their lives have already passed, hoping they
haven’t but suspecting they have. They are prone to depression and acting-out
behavior, including over eating, over spending, alcoholism, drug addiction,
pornography and promiscuity.”

In describing the dynamics of spiritual abuse
Watts says in his website that oftentimes, the religious abuser blames the
victim for the emotional and psychological damage that the victim experiences.

Watts says in his website, “Worst of all, the
mistreated person comes to believe that his or her abusers are correct.” This
enhances the guilt feelings in the victim and drives him further away from God.
“It’s a vicious, destructive downward spiral.”

Least discussed

Watts
told The Christian Post that oftentimes people are disengaged with the church
because they have questions or different ideas. Because of this, the church cuts
them off.

Watts
told The Christian Post, “Once shunned, they go off and are quickly forgotten.
So instead of leaving the 99 that are saved and going after the one that is
lost, they’ve allowed the people that are lost to become so great that they now
constitute 12 percent of the population.”

Watts’
book is published by Simon and Schuster and can be found in Barnes & Noble,
but not in LifeWay Christian bookstore. Watts told The Christian Post, “My
guess is they don’t like that I’m calling them on their stuff. I am, in the
evangelical world, the Nathan (the prophet in the Old Testament who confronted
King David about his sin).”

Personal
experience

Watts draws on his own experience of religious abuse,
writing in his website, “The first inkling of the severity of my psychological
damage came when I went shopping for a motorcycle, which I needed for
transportation. There were two good choices. Being a little confused about
which to purchase, I remember asking myself, Who is going to tell me which
one to buy?”

That was when he realized how dependent he had become on his church elders for making decisions, amid a community where
“acting independently” was viewed as rebelliousness.

Spiritual healing

Watts says in his 11 step program, among other things, that one has to recognize that God is not the abuser, The Christian Post said.

Other things one must do, according to his website, is to share one’s experience with a trusted friend, ask God to change what he wishes and submit one’s pain to God for healing.

Forgiveness is required. Watts wrote on his website, “Because God forgives us as we forgive others, I forgive my abusers.” Finally, he said one has to “make a commitment to nurture [one’s] relationship with God, asking him to reveal his will and to give [one] power to obey.”

A book on the history of the first 3,000 years of Christianity won recently Canada’s top literary nonfiction award, besting over 180 competitors from around the globe.

A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by British historian Diarmaid MacCulloch won $75,000 and the Cundill Prize in History from McGill University, The Globe and Mail reported.

The Cundill Prize was established in 2008 by Peter Cundill, an investment manager and McGill alumnus. The competition is open to writers worldwide, according to The Globe and Mail.

MacCulloch, 59, who is an Oxford professor, walked away with Canada’s largest monetary award given by the country for his 1,200 page tome during the awarding festivities held in Montreal, according to CBC News.

MacCulloch told The Globe and Mail that the award was “a great voice of confidence” in his work, adding, “Peter Cundill comes from the world of business, a world that doesn’t always take the long view, so it’s superb that someone who’s done so well in that world sees what we do as important and useful.”

The author took three years off from his work in Oxford University to write the book which is cited for its comprehensive historical treatment. He was up against two U.S. academics for the top prize, The Globe and Mail said.

Juror Adam Gopnik, a New Yorker writer and McGill alumnus, said in a statement that MacCullough’s book is refreshing amid a time when people of faith are at odds with one another and against seculars and atheists, CBC News said.

Gopnik said the book has “given us the one thing that we most need — not polemic but history, high, wide, and lucid, and, given the enormity of his task, often winningly light of touch.”

Gopnik added, “If any book could truly fulfill the charge of the Cundill Prize — to make first class history more potent to a wide reading public, and above all to remind us that history, even three thousand years worth, matters — this one does.”

Gopnik also said the book reached a “near perfect match of narrative flair and analytic detail. Taking as his subject nothing less than the whole history of the faith, MacCulloch has written a social history that illuminates changes in belief; and a history of belief that helps us see how our society got so much of its structure,” The Globe and Mail reported.

Another juror, Ken Whyte of Maclean’s, said MacCulloch’s book helped to make history more potent and meaningful to a wide reading public, according to The Globe and Mail.

Previous books by MacCullough are Thomas Cranmer: A Life, which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700 which won the British Academy Book Prize and a National Book Critics Circle Award, CBC News reported.

MacCulloch also hosted a BBC television series that was based on his Cundill Prize-winning book on Christianity, CBC News said.

Sam Childers arriving to the Book Signing Event of his book “Another Man’s War,” Beverly Hills, CA on May 5, 2009 - Photo by Glenn Francis of www.PacificProDigital.com Source: Wikimedia Commons

Hollywood action superstar Gerard Butler, whose recent high-octane roles include King Leonidas in “300” (2006) and Clyde Shelton in “Law Abiding Citizen” (2009), will soon be playing the role of real-life AK-47-toting Pastor Sam Childers in 2012’s “Machine Gun Preacher,” according to the Internet Movie Database.

A former bike gang member and drug dealer, Childers underwent a massive spiritual transformation in 1992, during a revival at an Assembly of God church and his pastor prophesied that Sam would one day travel to Africa.

Six years later, near the close of 1998, Childers boarded a plane for the Sudan.

It would be the first of several trips he would make to the war-torn region where the Ugandan sectarian militant group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army, led by Joseph Koney, had abducted and tortured an estimated 30,000 children and displaced 1.6 million people since the start of the rebellion in 1986.

The LRA claims they act under the principles and morals found in the Christian Bible and the Ten Commandments.

Childers made it his life’s mission to defend and protect the innocent children of the Sudan region by any means necessary.

For the past 12 years, the so-called “unconventional American pastor” has lived and operated in Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda. His Angels of East African Children’s village has become a safe haven for rescued children.

“Machine Gun Preacher” is currently in its preproduction phase and will begin shooting in Pennsylvania in early July, according to Variety Magazine.

Under the directorship of Golden Globe nominee Marc Foster, whose 2008 “Quantum of Solace” follow-up to the 2006 James Bond remake “Casino Royale” cemented him as a Hollywood action-film giant, “Machine Gun Preacher” will co-star Michelle Monoghan of “Mission Impossible 3” (2006) and “Eagle Eye” (2008) fame as Childers’ wife Lyn.

The Christian Post recently interviewed Childers about his use of heavy firearms.

“I don’t condone violence at all,” he responded. “I don’t believe in violence but at the same time I don’t believe that children should be raped, murdered or cut up.”

Gerard Butler at the 2010 Golden Globe Awards. Photo © gerardjamesbutler.co.uk Fan Site.

He also added, “I look at it as self-defense and I look at it as I’m helping God’s children. I’m not a person out to murder. It’s not that I like hurting anybody. But at the same time these people [the LRA] need to be stopped.”

Childers’ book Another Man’s War: the True Story of One Man’s Battle to Save Children in the Sudan and his official web site http://machinegunpreacher.org/ recall “the gruesome scenes after LRA raids that included the smelling of burning flesh and saving a woman drenched in her own blood from a breast that was half cut off by a machete,” according to The Christian Post.

Childers also recounted the LRA’s forcing of their victim’s to engage in cannibalism and children to murder their own mothers.

The biopic film’s release dates have undergone several changes and reschedulings since entering preproduction and is now slated for release sometime in 2012 with Lionsgate Entertainment and in association with 1984 Films.

You can find out more about Childers and his Angels of East Africa organization at his website www.machinegunpreacher.org.

Two academics who are also respected book authors said recently that secularism is just as much a religion as is Christianity and Islam.

Margaret Somerville, director of the Center of Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University, recently called secularism “The most encompassing religion that functions as a basket holding all the other [secular faiths],” in an article she wrote for The Montreal Gazette.

In Somerville’s article, “Religion has a role to play in the public square” she wrote, “It’s a mistake to accept that secularism is neutral. It too is a belief system used to bind people together. We need all voices to be heard in the democratic public square, and they have a right to be heard.”

Somerville also wrote the book, The Ethical Imagination:  Journeys of the Human Spirit.

Her views were echoed by Ian Buruma, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights & Journalism at Bard College, NY.  In rd magazine Buruma said,  “Secularism can be turned into a kind of dogma of its own which is the case of France after the revolution.  Reason was almost treated as a matter of faith.”

Buruma, who also wrote the book Taming the Gods, said secularism, like laicite is ideological.  “To extol reason as the highest form of human expression, that wants to ban religious symbols from public places and so on…it can become quite dogmatic, which secularism doesn’t have to be,” according to rd magazine.

Somerville cited a wide range of secular religions, quoting religious studies scholars Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young.

Some examples are humanism, atheism, scientism and moralism which all have adherents bound through a common belief and ideology.

Somerville said they are harmful when, as Richard Dawkins does with scientism, they are used to deny any space for spirituality and traditional  religion in the public square and replaced with secularism, according to The Montreal Gazette.

Somerville adds that separation of church and state is simply a doctrine meant to protect the state from being controlled or wrongfully interfered with by a religion or religions, and to protect religions, within their valid sphere of operation, from state interference or control.

She contrasts this with Islamic societies like Iran where no separation exists, and China where the government interferes in the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops.

She concludes, “Values conflicts cannot be solved by excluding religious voices from the public square. On the contrary, doing so is likely to exacerbate those conflicts.”