A pastor in Iran sentenced to death for refusing to recant his faith may have to wait another year for a ruling on whether the sentence will be upheld, according to sources.

Yousef (also spelled Youcef) Nadarkhani, sentenced to death after a court of appeals in Rasht, Iran, found him guilty of leaving Islam in September 2010, has been in prison since October 2009, yet his lawyers said they were told to not expect any movement on his case for another year.

“The news we have about Yousef is not official, but that’s what the lawyers are saying,” a member of the Church of Iran who requested anonymity told Compass. “The lawyers speak to the judges’ secretaries and hear things. Rasht is not a big city, so it is easy to know what is happening.

The head of Iran’s Judiciary, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, has reportedly ordered the presiding judge over the trial in Rasht to do nothing for one year.

The court in Rasht, 243 kilometers (151 miles) northwest of Tehran, was expected to pronounce a verdict on Nadarkhani’s appeal in October, and sources said the court’s long silence bodes ill. Instead of pronouncing a verdict, the court sent the Christian’s case to the nation’s Islamic authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, to make a ruling.

Authorities have also continued to pressure Nadarkhani to recant his faith while in prison. In September they gave him Islamic literature aimed at discrediting the Bible, according to sources, and instructed him to read it. The court reportedly has been told to use whatever means necessary to compel Nadarkhani to recant his faith.

The anonymous Christian who spoke to Compass said he didn’t believe that Nadarkhani would be executed soon, but he said authorities were tense about his case, indicating that nothing was certain.

Some Iranian Christians have said that, in the face of international outrage over the case, the government would announce a verdict near the Christmas holidays so that it would receive less notice.

Many Christians in Iran believe Church of Iran doctrine is less than Trinitarian, although the statement of faith on the church’s website (http://www.eglisediran.org/?page_id=8) indicates belief in a triune God-head of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Christian leaders in Iran have called for prayer for their leaders and congregations over the Christmas and New Year period, as there are fears that pressures on churches may intensify in the coming days, according to advocacy group Middle East Concern (MEC).

“These fears stem partly from the waves of arrests last Christmas and New Year, and also the previous year, in which several dozen believers were detained,” MEC reported in a press statement. “Two of those arrested in late December 2010, Farshid and Noorallah, remain in prison.

Farshid Fathi, 32, has been in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran since Dec. 26, 2010. He is married and has two young children. Noorollah Qabitizade, a Christian convert and a house church leader held in Ahwaz in southwestern Iran, has been in prison since Christmas Eve of last year.

Between December of last year and February, authorities arrested scores of Christians. All have been released, except for Qabitizade and Fathi.

Authorities arrested Nadarkhani in his home city of Rasht in Oct. 2009 on charges that he questioned obligatory religion classes in Iranian schools. After finding him guilty of apostasy, the court of appeals in Rasht in November 2010 issued a written confirmation of his charges and death sentence.

At an appeal hearing in June, the Supreme Court of Iran upheld Nadarkhani’s sentence but asked the court in Rasht to determine if he was a practicing Muslim before his conversion. The court declared that Nadarkhani was not a practicing Muslim before his conversion, but that he was still guilty of apostasy due to his Muslim ancestry.

The Supreme Court had also determined that his death sentence could be annulled if he recanted his faith. The Rasht court gave Nadarkhani three chances to recant Christianity in accordance with sharia (Islamic law), but Nadarkhani refused to do so. His final appeal hearings ended on Sept. 28, and the court was expected to make its final decision two weeks from the final hearing.

Nadarkhani’s lawyer, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, also faces charges for “actions and propaganda against the Islamic regime,” due to his human rights activities.

In addition, this month Iranian authorities sentenced Alireza Seyedian to six years imprisonment for being baptized in Turkey and uploading a video of his baptism to the Internet, according to Mohabat News. Seyedian is another member of the Church of Iran, and Dadkhah is also representing him.

As Christians in Iran are held hostage to the government’s political whims, some Iranian Christians say the key to their freedom is continued pressure from the international community.

Jacob “Jake” Finkbonner of Ferndale, Wash., was 5 years old in 2006 when he split his lip playing basketball, developed a deadly flesh-eating strep infection and lay near death for months at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Jake’s father, Don, is Native American and a member of the Lummi tribe. The family’s priest at the time, the Rev. Timothy Sauer, urged Jake’s parents to pray to a 17th-century Mohawk-Algonquin woman to seek God’s miracle.

Sauer said he suggested Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha because “I knew Kateri herself had been deeply disfigured by smallpox, so it seemed like she would be a good person to call on for this young boy whose face and head were infected.

“And I knew that Native American Christians have been looking forward to the church’s acknowledgment of their contributions in a more public way. Kateri Tekakwitha has always been a rallying point for their faith.”

On Monday (Dec. 19), the Vatican announced that Tekakwitha will be canonized as a Catholic saint, the first Native American from North America so proclaimed.

It takes proof of two miracles to certify that a Catholic is clearly in heaven asking God to help people who pray in their name. Now, Jake’s miraculous healing has been credited to the intercession of Tekakwitha, who died in 1680 at age 24.

Jake’s mother, Elsa Finkbonner, said her son turned the corner toward survival after a visit by a member of the Tekakwitha Conference, based in Great Falls, Mont., which evangelizes to a half-million Native American Catholics.

The woman, also named Kateri, brought a small coin with an image of Tekakwitha and a prayer card, Finkbonner said.

“I pinned that relic to his pillow and I read that prayer to him every single day,” his mother said.

Today, Jake is training to be an altar boy at church and still playing basketball.

“I pray to Kateri now myself,” Jake said Monday. “Other people have asked about my story and told me their stories, and I pray to her for other people to be healed.”

The Vatican scrupulously investigates miracle claims for proof that recovery was not a result of medical or surgical attention. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told NPR that about 10 to 15 percent of patients with Jake’s variation of strep die.

Sister Kateri Mitchell of the Tekakwitha Conference, a Mohawk herself, was among 400 Native Americans who attended the beatification ceremony in 1980, when Tekakwitha’s history of miracles was first recognized by the church.

“I think thousands of us will try to go to Rome for the canonization,” she said. “We have waited so long for this.”

Native American Catholics were once doubly ostracized for their culture and their faith, says church historian Matthew Bunson, co-author of a biography of Tekakwitha, “Mystic in the Wilderness.” The book will be reissued in 2012 under a new name, “Saint Tekakwitha: Glory of Many Nations.”

Known as the Lily of the Mohawks, Tekakwitha was born in what is now Upstate New York, the daughter of a Mohawk chief and Algonquin Christian mother.

She was just 4 or 5 when she was scarred in the smallpox epidemic that killed her parents and most of her family. Believers say her scars vanished at her death.

The dates for the canonization will likely be announced by February, Bunson said.

Christopher Hitchens will be remembered as many things: an acerbic essayist, connoisseur of Scotch and cigarettes and roguish writer whose forceful pen was fueled by an imposing intellect.

Yet his impact on American life, which will be felt long after his death at age 62 on Thursday (Dec. 15), is likely to be the unabashed atheism he championed throughout his life, and the public voice he gave to growing numbers of unbelievers.

Even his foes — whose prayers he simultaneously welcomed and rejected as he battled esophageal cancer — say his acid-tongued arguments against God sharpened their own.

“As an atheist who challenged America’s deeply held religious convictions, he will continue to serve as a thorn in the side of those who believe that religion requires no rational defense,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a friend and frequent sparring partner, wrote in a tribute for The Forward, a national Jewish newspaper.

Hitchens had long been a foe of organized religion and its leading lights; when the late Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa in 2003, Hitchens dismissed her as a “fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.” He called the late Jerry Falwell an “ugly little charlatan,” saying “it’s a pity there isn’t a hell for him to go to.”

Throughout his career, Hitchens rejected religious faith as “evil nonsense,” and a “real danger” to civilized society. “I regard it as an enemy,” he said in 2008, “and a real deadly one.”

The self-described anti-theist channeled his unbelief into a direct and eloquent challenge of religion, especially the large and small actions carried out in God’s name.

“Christopher Hitchens changed the discussion about religion and nonbelief by championing public criticism of theology,” said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association.

The murderous religious extremism behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks crystalized Hitchens’ fears about religion. In the years after 9/11, he and other public atheists shot to the top of best-sellers lists with titles like his 2007 manifesto, “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”

Together with Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, Hitchens was hailed as one of the “Four Horsemen.” In a tweet after Hitchens’ death, Dawkins heralded his friend as a “valiant fighter against all tyrants, including God.”

Still, Hitchens’ take-no-prisoners style was not universally embraced within atheist circles. Hitchens could be as militant and fundamentalist as those he criticized, his atheist allies said, and did little to help the movement’s public perception.

“Now, they’re very good atheists and very dedicated people who do not believe in God,” Paul Kurtz, founder of the Council for Secular Humanism, told NPR in 2009. “But you have this aggressive and militant phase of atheism, and that does more damage than good.”

When Hitchens announced his terminal cancer last year, some foes hoped it would prompt a deathbed conversion of sorts. Hitchens said he was grateful that people would care enough to pray for him, but swiftly rejected the idea that death could or should make him a believer.

“I have resented the idea that it should be assumed, now that you may be terrified, or depressed, that now would be the time to throw out values you have had for a lifetime,” he said. “Repulsive. Wholly contemptible.”

In life, Hitchens swam against the tides of religious belief that shape so much of modern life. In death — an irony that would delight and disturb his contrarian soul — believers are using the loss of the most articulate voice of unbelief in a generation to argue, once again, for belief.

“The point about Christopher Hitchens is not that he died of unbelief,” tweeted R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, “but that his unbelief is all that matters now. Unspeakably sad.”

A man went to his rabbi and complained, “There are ten of us living in one room. Life is unbearable! What can I do?” The rabbi answered, “Go home and take your goat into the room with you.”  The man was incredulous; but the rabbi was insistent. “Do as I say. Come back in a week.”

A week later the man returned looking even more distraught than before. ”Rabbi, please, we cannot stand it. The goat is so filthy!” The rabbi then told him, “Very well, go home and let the goat out. Come back in a week.”

A radiant man returned to the rabbi a week later. His perspective had been astonishingly altered. “Life is beautiful,” he cried. “We enjoy every minute of living together without the goat – and there’s only the ten of us!”

Jesus once encountered a group of ten, living together, with little for which to be thankful. These ten had more than a stinking goat in the room. They had leprosy. From a distance they shout to the rabbi Jesus to have mercy on them – life was unbearable.

This group was following standard social protocol. Leprosy was highly contagious and had to be controlled. Those who had the disease were quarantined into colonies. Those unfortunate enough to contract the disease were thus cut off from family and friends, typically, for the rest of their lives.

It’s hard for us to imagine the stigma attached to this malady when we have never seen anyone with the disease. It is a crippling, disfiguring condition. Today it can be treated and cured with drugs costing a couple hundred dollars, but in Jesus’ day, it was a death sentence. Devastating the skin, eyes, and lungs, it ate away at the nerve endings and flesh until it completely dismantled the sufferer.

Jesus did more than change their perspective. Mercifully, he healed them. Maybe fingers began to grow back. Maybe the difficult breathing was replaced by fully inflatable lungs. Maybe their splotchy skin became pink and healthy again. For the first time in years they are physically well, and this group turns together from death’s door. But they do not turn together toward their healer.

Only one of the ten came back to Jesus. This one fell at the feet of Christ and worshiped him. Outside of others in his leper colony, this was the first person he had drawn close to in years. He didn’t run home to a wife he had not held in years. He didn’t scoop up the children he had only seen play at a distance. He didn’t seek out his old friends who had long given him up for dead.

No, he went first and foremost to Jesus. He threw himself down on the ground in devotion. This was a thankful man. This was a grateful man. This was a man with perspective. The tragedy is that this was the only one who returned to say, “Thank you.” Even Jesus was surprised by this. “Were not all ten cleansed?” Jesus asked rhetorically. “Then, where are the other nine?”

Why didn’t the others come back? Maybe one waited to see if the cure was for real. Maybe another intended to go back later, as soon as possible. Maybe one ran to the family from which he had long been separated or got so entranced with having his life back, he simply forgot to return to the one who had performed the healing. I don’t know for sure.

But I do know that we can become so absorbed in our happiness – in our blessings or good fortune – that we fail to consider the Source of those blessings. We do not maintain perspective, and can sometimes say “Thank you,” because we know that it is the proper thing to do, but saying it and feeling it are two different things.

During this holiday week, may the Source of every good and perfect gift give us the greatest gift of all: A grateful heart. In return, may we fall at his feet with thanksgiving.

The mistreatment of a pastor in Iran awaiting a decision on his death sentence for refusing to recant his faith amounts to physical and psychological torture, a source close to the pastor’s family said.

Yousef (also spelled Youcef) Nadarkhani, sentenced to death a year ago after a court of appeals in Rasht, Iran, found him guilty of leaving Islam in September 2010, is in deteriorating health, according to a member of Nadarkhani’s denomination, the Church of Iran, who requested anonymity.

He said that communication with Nadarkhani is limited, but that sources close to the imprisoned Christian indicated that he has undergone physical and psychological torture.

“Certainly he was hit, but his [telephone] conversations are heard [by authorities],” the source said. “We know that he has been in extreme situations, and we consider that torture. When you have spent time in a solitary cell unable to talk to others for a long time, or you are told you will be killed, this is also torture.”

The court in Rasht, 243 kilometers (151 miles) northwest of Tehran, was expected to pronounce a verdict on Nadarkhani’s appeal last month, and sources said the court’s long silence bodes ill. Instead of pronouncing a verdict, the court sent the Christian’s case to the nation’s Islamic authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, to make a ruling.

Authorities have also continued to pressure Nadarkhani to recant his faith while in prison. Last month they gave him Islamic literature aimed at discrediting the Bible, according to sources, and instructed him to read it.

Some sources indicate a ruling could come the second half of December. One said some Iranian Christians believe that, in the face of international outrage over the case, the government would announce a verdict near the Christmas holidays so that it would receive less notice.

On Nov. 10, the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) reported that a verdict on Nadarkhani’s case was expected in mid-December, regardless of whether there is a ruling by Khamenei.

Authorities arrested Nadarkhani in his home city of Rasht in Oct. 2009 on charges that he questioned obligatory religion classes in Iranian schools. After finding him guilty of apostasy, the court of appeals in Rasht in November 2010 issued a written confirmation of his charges and death sentence.

At an appeal hearing in June, the Supreme Court of Iran upheld Nadarkhani’s sentence but asked the court in Rasht to determine if he was a practicing Muslim before his conversion. The court declared that Nadarkhani was not a practicing Muslim before his conversion, but that he was still guilty of apostasy due to his Muslim ancestry.

The Supreme Court had also determined that his death sentence could be annulled if he recanted his faith. The Rasht court gave Nadarkhani three chances to recant Christianity in accordance with sharia (Islamic law), but Nadarkhani refused to do so. His final appeal hearings ended on Sept. 28, and the court was expected to make its final decision two weeks from the final hearing.

“For the moment, we are waiting,” said the Church of Iran source. “We have no response for now. The only thing his lawyer told me is that the file went to the Supreme Court, but normally we should have had a response by now.”

There are two more Christians from the Church of Iran, a denomination that Iranian Christians accuse of being “non-Trinitarian,” who are also serving prison sentences.

Behnam Irani has been in prison since he was arrested on April 14 in Karaj, charged with “propaganda against the system.”

Authorities were due to release him on Oct. 20, but instead they handed him a letter just days before informing him that a five-year prison sentence from 2008 for “action against national security,” which had been suspended, was effective immediately due to the second conviction on a similar charge, according to Mohabat News.

The other incarcerated Christian, Mehdi Foroutan (also known as Petros), has been in prison in Shiraz for two months, serving a one-year sentence for propaganda against the state and “action against national security,” according to sources.

As Christians in Iran are held hostage to the government’s political whims, the source said, the key to their freedom is continued pressure from the international community.

“The pressure is the most important thing,” he said. “When the Iranian state sees pressure, they will understand the world hasn’t forgotten Yousef, Behnam and Petros.”

Nadarkhani’s lawyer, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, also faces charges for “actions and propaganda against the Islamic regime,” due to his human rights activities.

In the past week U.S. State Department Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Suzan Johnson Cook called for the release of Pastor Nadarkhani, according to CBN.

“I want to echo President Obama’s and Secretary Clinton’s – and repeat my own – condemnation of his conviction and our calls on Iranian authorities to release Pastor Nadarkhani immediately,” Cook said, according to CBN. “I urge all of you to do the same.”

Arrests of Christians

Another wave of arrests is expected this December and January, a favorite time for Iranian authorities to make the rounds at Christian house group meetings, according to the Church of Iran source. He said the best Christmas gift for Iranian Christians this year would be for Western powers and Christians to continue to lobby for their freedoms.

Historically, the Iranian government has cracked down on Christians during the Christmas season, when house group members gather in larger numbers. Last year in a two-month period over the holidays, authorities arrested more than 120 Christians belonging to Iran’s underground church.

All have been released, with a few known exceptions. One of those arrested, Farshid Fathi, 32, has been in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran since Dec. 26, 2010. He has spent much of that time in solitary confinement and has been mistreated, according to Mohabat News. He is married and has two young children.

Noorollah Ghabitizadeh (also spelled Qabitizade) has been in prison since Dec. 24, 2010. Authorities originally held him in Dezful and later transferred him to Ahwaz as punishment for starting a Bible study at the Dezful prison, Mohabat News reported.

Authorities have reportedly put Ghabitizadeh under intense pressure to renounce Christianity and return to Islam. In his first trial hearing two months ago, a judge pressured him by telling him his death penalty for apostasy would be decided in that court hearing, according to Mohabat News.

On Oct. 17 authorities arrested another Christian convert, Fariborz Arazm, 44, in Robat Karim, according to Mohabat News. His whereabouts and condition are unknown.

Earlier this week, Amnesty International issued a statement denouncing the continual degradation of human rights in Iran and the unwillingness of the government to espouse international human rights practices.

The official religion of Iran is Shiite Muslim, and the country’s laws and regulations are based on sharia.

Today, an Oregon judge sentenced two members of a faith-healing church to more than six years in prison, saying the death of their newborn son was easily avoidable.

A jury in September unanimously found Dale and Shannon Hickman guilty of second-degree manslaughter after their son, David Hickman, died after less than nine hours. The boy was born approximately two months premature and weighed less than four pounds.

Close to 100 people packed Judge Robert Herndon’s courtroom for the sentencing, nearly all of them fellow members of the Followers of Christ church, an Oregon City congregation that shuns medicine in favor of faith-healing.

Herndon gave the couple 75 months in prison, the mandatory minimum under state sentencing guidelines. The sentence also has three years of probation.

“As the evidence enfolded and the witnesses testified, it became evidence to me and certainly to the jury … that this death just simply did not need to occur,” Herndon said.

Before the sentencing, both parents tearfully asked Herndon for mercy, specifically for their 7-year-old child and new baby. Shannon Hickman mentioned she spent “24 hours a day” with her children, and Dale Hickman asked the court to specifically have mercy for his wife.

“We are willing to do anything that the court sees fit,” Dale Hickman said.

Prosecutor Mike Regan took a hard line on the couple, saying a strong message needed to be sent to the church, which has a long history of child deaths due to lack of medical treatment.

“These generally are good, decent, law-abiding folks, except in this one narrow area of their lives,” Regan said. “One (area) where they have told us stubbornly—and arrogantly, if I may—that ‘We are not going to change.”’

“The law of civil society demands that they change,” Regan continued. “It demands that we sent a message to all of them that whether you believe this or not in Oregon, you cannot act upon that belief.”

Dale Hickmans’ defense attorney, Mark Cogan, pushed for probation, saying the Hickmans would be compliant with any court orders for medical care. The couple has already taken their two children—a seven-year-old and a new baby—to see a pediatrician, Cogan noted.

“These are not criminals,” Cogan said.

The Hickmans are the fourth couple from the church to be convicted for refusing to get medicine for a sick child. Timothy and Rebecca Wyland, who were convicted of first-degree criminal mistreatment for failing to seek treatment for a growth that threatened their daughter’s eyesight, supported the Hickmans at the courthouse on Monday.

Carl Brent Worthington, who was convicted of criminal mistreatment in the death of his 15-month-old daughter, also sat in the courtroom.

Shannon Hickman’s attorney, John Neidig, asked the judge for special consideration for his client, noting that she did not have as many chances to call for help because in their church, all decisions are made by the husband.

“That is a function of their religion, a religious practice,” Neidig insisted. “The husband is the head of the household, like Christ is the head of the church.”

The Pakistani judge who imposed a death sentence on the assassin of Punjab governor Salman Taseer has gone underground due to threats from Islamic fundamentalists, Pakistani church officials have confirmed.

“It is true that the judge has vanished. Nobody knows where is now,” Azariah, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Pakistan (NCCP), told ENInews on Oct. 14 from his office in Lahore.

Justice Syed Pervez Ali Shah of the Anti Terrorism court had sentenced to death on Oct. 1 policeman Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri for shooting Taseer on Jan. 4. The governor had criticized a Pakistani blasphemy law that makes it a crime to insult Islam.

With Islamic groups continuing protests against the verdict, Shah has not been seen in his Rawalpindi office since Oct. 4, according to Malik Khalid Jawad, president of the bar association.

Michele Chaudhry, a Catholic and spokesperson of All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA), also confirmed to ENInews that the judge Shah has gone “on long leave without any clue to his whereabouts,” adding “this is the danger faced by anyone who is seen as opposing the blasphemy law.”

Azariah said that Islamic groups are still continuing the protests against the death sentence to Qadri with demonstrations being held across Pakistan on Oct. 14.

Meanwhile the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), visited Pakistan from Oct. 8-10 and called for protection of religious minorities and the need for measures against religious intolerance.

“The Pakistani government should not turn a blind eye to the culture of violence perpetrated through the use and abuse of the blasphemy law, which intensify communal hatred, intolerance and persecution … particularly of religious minorities,” Tveit said.

When he dies, Clem Parnell expects his soul to ascend heavenward. He wants his ashes to be loaded into a shotgun shell and blasted at a turkey.

“I will rest in peace knowing that the last thing that turkey will see is me screaming at him at about 900 feet per second,” says Parnell, 59.

Parnell and his business partner, fellow Alabama state game warden Thad Holmes, believe other hunters have similar hankerings. This July, they launched Holy Smoke LLC, which offers to load the cremains of customers into shotgun shells, rifle cartridges and bullets.

For about $850, a customer will receive 250 shotgun shells, 100 rifle cartridges or 250 pistol cartridges packed with the deceased’s ashes. Discounts are available for the military, police and firemen.

After most funeral rites, scattered remains become trodden dirt. Gravesites go unvisited and ash-filled urns sit unnoticed, said Holmes, 56. Loading up a loved one for one final duck hunt would be a more fitting send-off, he says, especially for avid outdoorsmen.

“We want to give people an alternative to celebrate a person’s life,” said Holmes.

Holy Smoke insists that remains are handled reverently by a team of five ATF-trained loaders. There is no commingling of ashes, and unused cremains are returned. Parnell, a Southern Baptist, says all seven Holy Smoke employees are “good Christians, with good moral values.”

“Just because you’re getting shot out of a gun doesn’t make it irreverent,” said Holmes.

But some Christian scholars say Holy Smoke is firing spiritual blanks.

“It’s a terrible idea,” said David W. Jones, a professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC.

“This idea of putting grandpa in a rifle shell or scattering his ashes on a baseball field goes against Christianity. We’re supposed to show respect for ashes, not throw them to the wind,” said Jones, who has written about cremation in theJournal of the Evangelical Theological Society.

For centuries, Christians shunned cremation as a heathen practice. Burying the dead, church fathers taught, continues the tradition of the Jewish patriarchs and honors bodies made in the image of God. More importantly, Christians believe that bodies and souls will one day be raised to eternal life, just as Jesus was.

“The Christian tradition is unambiguous about burial being the norm,” said Andrew Harvey, a professor of English at Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)-related Grove City College in Pennsylvania who has written on the cremation trend.

“Jesus’ burial is a template for our own. But I don’t think many people make that concrete connection anymore,” he said.

Instead, Harvey said, many Christians have adopted a modern form of Gnosticism, believing the soul shakes free from the body after death as a snake sheds its skin.

Church strictures against cremation have loosened in recent decades, and few consider it a mortal sin. But some caution that there are good theological reasons for burying bodies.

“If the end game is that we live in physical bodies on a physical earth no longer affected by sin and worship God forever, then maybe we need to show respect for our bodies when we die,” said Jones.

Funeral industry experts say Holy Smoke is unique, but not unusual. Cremation accounted for 37 percent of all final dispositions in 2009, according to the National Funeral Directors Association, and is expected to cross the 50 percent threshold this decade.

Meanwhile, more Americans are planning their funerals in advance, often with highly personalized send-offs.

Surfers scatter their ashes over favorite swells. Californians fill fireworks with their remains and shoot them over the San Francisco Bay. Cremains can be inserted in coral reefs, fashioned as diamonds, or launched into space. Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards even snorted his father’s ashes.

“There has been an ongoing proliferation of innovative forms of memorializing the dead and taking care of the human remains,” said Gary Laderman, an expert on religion and American death rites at Emory University in Atlanta.

“People want to do it themselves and make sure it fits with their personality and commitments,” he said.

In other words, instead of religious services that prepare a soul for the afterlife, funerals are becoming a final act of self-expression, said Matthew Lee Anderson, author of Earthen Vessels, a book about Christianity and the body.

At the same time, more Americans find transcendence and meaning outside church walls, scholars say. Holmes said watching the sun rise through the trees while sitting in a hunting stand is about as sacred as life gets.

“You see the birds and animals and you say, look at what God has wrought,” he said. “It’s a soul Band-Aid.”

When he dies, Holmes believes his bandaged soul will float away from his body.

“Your spirit is not with your body anymore,” he said. “You’ve either gone up or down.” What’s left, he said, is “nothing more than organic matter and ash.”

But Parnell appears to believe at least part of him will remain with his ashes. After a career in law enforcement, he said, he cherishes the chance to help protect his family after death.

“I would love for this company to take my ashes and make two rounds,” he said. “If someone broke into my home to assault a member of my family, I could rest easier knowing that I helped kill him.”

Question: “What does the Bible say about the death penalty / capital punishment?”

Answer: The Old Testament law commanded the death penalty for various acts: murder (Exodus 21:12), kidnapping (Exodus 21:16), bestiality (Exodus 22:19), adultery (Leviticus 20:10), homosexuality (Leviticus 20:13), being a false prophet (Deuteronomy 13:5), prostitution and rape (Deuteronomy 22:24), and several other crimes.

However, God often showed mercy when the death penalty was due.

David committed adultery and murder, yet God did not demand his life be taken (2 Samuel 11:1-5, 14-17; 2 Samuel 12:13).

Ultimately, every sin we commit should result in the death penalty because the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Thankfully, God demonstrates His love for us in not condemning us (Romans 5:8).

When the Pharisees brought a woman who was caught in the act of adultery to Jesus and asked Him if she should be stoned, Jesus replied, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). This should not be used to indicate that Jesus rejected capital punishment in all instances.

Jesus was simply exposing the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. The Pharisees wanted to trick Jesus into breaking the Old Testament law; they did not truly care about the woman being stoned (where was the man who was caught in adultery?)

God is the One who instituted capital punishment: “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man” (Genesis 9:6). Jesus would support capital punishment in some instances. Jesus also demonstrated grace when capital punishment was due (John 8:1-11). The apostle Paul definitely recognized the power of the government to institute capital punishment where appropriate (Romans 13:1-7).

How should a Christian view the death penalty? First, we must remember that God has instituted capital punishment in His Word; therefore, it would be presumptuous of us to think that we could institute a higher standard. God has the highest standard of any being; He is perfect.

This standard applies not only to us but to Himself. Therefore, He loves to an infinite degree, and He has mercy to an infinite degree. We also see that He has wrath to an infinite degree, and it is all maintained in a perfect balance.

Second, we must recognize that God has given government the authority to determine when capital punishment is due (Genesis 9:6; Romans 13:1-7).

It is unbiblical to claim that God opposes the death penalty in all instances. Christians should never rejoice when the death penalty is employed, but at the same time, Christians should not fight against the government’s right to execute the perpetrators of the most evil of crimes.

Recommended Resource:  The Death Penalty: An Historical and Theological Survey

The head of an Alzheimer’s organization said recently that comments by televangelist Pat Robertson, referring to Alzheimer’s as a type of “death” that may justify divorce, highlights the need for more public education about the ailment.

Eric J. Hall, founder and head of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, said the comments Robertson made on the 700 Club only illustrate the need to erase the stigma of Alzheimer’s by helping people to perceive how the brain disorder affects afflicted individuals and their families.

Robertson’s comments infuriated Christians, including leaders and members of the Evangelical community. One comment to a blog in Christianity Today said Robertson gave “horrible advice.” Another comment said the advice was “wretched,” and a third said it was “irresponsible, callous.”

Hall said, “There is no doubt that this heartbreaking disease robs people of their memories and other intellectual functions, but to liken Alzheimer’s disease to, as Mr. Robertson said, ‘a kind of death’ fosters an insensitivity that feeds misperceptions about the disease. It fails to take into account that people with Alzheimer’s disease, although impaired, deserve optimal care and dignity. Love and compassion are the greatest gifts for every human being until their very last breath.”

Robertson made the comment when a caller to the 700 Club told of a friend whose wife has advanced Alzheimer’s, and who had been dating other women. The friend justified his action by saying that his wife, as he knew her, “is gone.”

Robertson replied, “That is a terribly hard thing. I hate Alzheimer’s. It is one of the most awful things because here is a loved one—this is the woman or man that you have loved for 20, 30, 40 years. And suddenly that person is gone. They’re gone. They are gone. So, what he says basically is correct. But I know it sounds cruel, but if he’s going to do something he should divorce her and start all over again. But to make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her.”

Overwhelming loneliness

Michael Verde, founder and head of Memory Bridge (which helps Alzheimer’s patients to connect with communities), disagreed with Robertson, and said it would be damaging to leave a spouse who is afflicted with the disease.

Verde, an evangelical Christian, said victims experience loneliness which can be overwhelming. He told The Chicago Tribune, “Ask Pat Robertson: ‘Is there ever a condition in which God would rightfully divorce us?’ The answer is no.”

Robertson McQuilkin, former president of Columbia Bible College and Seminary, left his job of 22 years to care for his wife who was afflicted with Alzheimer’s for 25 years until she died in 2003.

McQuilkin, in a 2004 interview with Christianity Today said he never regretted caring for his wife. “Some people sort of resent the imposition, but those thoughts never came to me. I thought it was a privilege to care for her. She had always cared for me.”

Never an ‘accident’ in marriage

Evangelical speaker Joni Eareckson Tada, founder of Joni and Friends International Disability Center, said on her website, “When a Christian leader views marriage on a sliding scale, what does this say to the millions of couples who must deal daily with catastrophic injuries and illnesses?”

Tada added, “Alzheimer’s disease is never an ‘accident’ in a marriage; it falls under the purview of God’s sovereignty. In the case of someone with Alzheimer’s, this means God’s unconditional and sacrificial love has an opportunity to be even more gloriously displayed in a life together!”