With a hugely symbolic hug and an exchange of kisses on the cheek, Pope Francis and the grand imam of Cairo’s al-Azhar Mosque, which houses a 1,000-year-old university, took a major step toward restoring relations between major branches of the world’s two largest faiths, Roman Catholicism and Sunni Islam. The two met privately for 25 minutes in the pope’s private library at the Vatican.
“This meeting is the message,” the pope told the imam, Ahmed Mohamed el-Tayeb. Continue reading…
WASHINGTON — An ecumenical event featuring Hillsong United, Lecrae, Michael W. Smith, Josh McDowell, Ravi Zacharias, Francis Chan and other renown evangelical and Catholic speakers and musicians that is set to take place in Washington, D.C. is raising concerns as it seeks to draw a million attendees to “link arms” in unity, including with the Vatican.
“Together 2016” is an event to be held on July 16 at the National Mall in Washington, and seeks to unite those of various backgrounds to “stand together for Jesus.” Both Christians and Catholics alike will be featured at the prayer and worship event…
This week, Hall announced that Jorge Bergoglio, also known as Pope Francis, will be delivering a video message to those in attendance…
Hall traveled to Rome on Thursday to meet with the Roman Catholic leader and other Vatican officials ahead of the event… Continue reading…
Related: Pope and Hillsong plan a 1 million man gathering in DC
The head of the Protestant Church in Germany has called for Islam to be taught in state schools across the country as a way to make young Muslims impervious to the “temptation of fundamentalists.”
Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm told the Heilbronner Stimme newspaper that teaching Islam in schools nationwide would give Muslim pupils a chance to take a critical approach to their own religion. Continue reading…
Many of America’s top Christian leaders, representing a variety of races, ages and denominations, will convene in the Dallas area Sept. 21 for The Gathering, a national solemn assembly to pray for forgiveness, wisdom and provision for our country.
The Gathering will be held at Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, with an afternoon session for leaders beginning at noon CT. The national prayer event open to the public will begin at 7 p.m. Both events will be simulcast around the country.
Dr. Tony Evans, chief organizer of The Gathering, said the Bible calls for a solemn assembly with fasting and prayer when God’s people have grown away from Him and want to renew their relationship. Continue reading…
WLOS — HAYWOOD COUNTY, N.C. — A little bit of Western North Carolina is presented to the Pope.
Lake Junaluska World Methodist Museum wanted to present Pope Francis with a small sculpture of Methodist church founder John Wesley, seeing parallels between them.
“The Pope goes into the communities,” museum director Jackie Bolden said. “He goes into the slums, and when he travels, he goes where the people are.” Continue reading…
Despite Pope Francis’ literal embracing of a top Islamic cleric and declaration that their “Meeting is the message,” his top aid said Christians must apply Matthew 28 to everyone, including Muslims.
“We have a mission to convert all non-Christian religions’ people [except] Judaism,” Cardinal Kurt Koch said. “And what is very important for us is that we can make mission only with a credible witness and without any proselytism.” Continue reading…
The leadership of the World Evangelical Alliance and the World Council of Churches have met in the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, Switzerland to explore and discuss possible areas of future cooperation.
“Pope Francis has met the grand imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque at the Vatican in a historic encounter that was sealed with a hugely symbolic hug and exchange of kisses. The first Vatican meeting on Monday between the leader of the world’s Catholics and the highest authority in Sunni Islam marks the culmination of a significant improvement in relations between the two faiths since Francis took office in 2013. …Ties were badly soured when the now-retired Benedict made a September 2006 speech in which he was perceived to have linked Islam to violence, sparking deadly protests in several countries and reprisal attacks on Christians.”
One has to realize the craftiness of the beast to really appreciate what’s going on here. Benedict, as evil as he was as pope, was not the catalyst that brought the Muslims to anger that caused them to start killing Christians en masse. If it was, the killings would have begun at his remarks in 2006 wherein he said the (so called) prophet Muhammad’s teachings were “evil and inhuman.” Continue reading…
The 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 should be a profoundly ecumenical, as well as European and international celebration, according to Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, chair of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD).
“With this clear distinction from all other commemorations of past centuries, we are sending a signal of reconciliation and a new beginning,” Bedford-Strohm said at a 9 May press conference in Berlin announcing events leading up to the anniversary on 31 October 2017.
The commemoration marks the day in 1517 on which Martin Luther is said to have posted his 95 theses denouncing church abuses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Continue reading…
Pope Francis says that London’s election of the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital is an example of how migrants can be integrated in Europe.
Voters in the English capital elected Sadiq Khan, the son of a Pakistani bus driver, on May 6 after a campaign in which the Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith, was criticized for focusing on Labour candidate Khan’s religion.
In an interview with French Catholic newspaper La Croix published on Tuesday, the leader of the Catholic Church said that Khan’s election provided an encouraging sign as other parts of Europe put up borders to migrants coming from the Middle East and Africa. Francis, 79, cited the orchestrators of the Brussels attacks—in which suicide bombings at an airport and metro station killed 36 people in March—as an example of the consequences of not integrating migrants. Many of the perpetrators of both the Brussels attacks and Paris attacks that killed 130 people in November 2015 grew up in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital, seen as a haven for extremists. Continue reading…