Jews For Jesus

[arabianrose]

Interesting

I was not able to come to any kind of conclusion after reading this article, nor do I wish to come to one. Conclusions are for the needy and I for one am tired of being needy.

Religion is like...

It's like vegetable soup. Or... an Everything Bagel. Or a place in which pigs and men can wallow and play.

Shit, what do I know.

Comments

[alixkat]

I was invited to a small lecture given by the first and only Israeli to ever give a lecture at AUC in 2001. Israel Shamir, I believe was the man's name, anyway, he told us that people are regularly persecuted, not just Muslims, Palestinians, etc. but also those who belong to the Orthodoxy and Anglicans. He said that many Christians in Israel worship quite literally underground and there is a Russian Orthodox Church that is under the city streets.

Crazy. You think that the days of religious persecution are over or that the Inquisition is uncool and then you realise that this sort of passive-aggressive (and not-so-passive) garbage still goes on.

I believe it about the Messianic Jews, they're kind of like the Jewish Ahmediyya.

[arabianrose]

And they say Israel is one of the best established democracies. Go figure.

[rami_raksab]

just to point out: an underground temple in Israel is not, in itself, a sign of persecution, and it's not even very unusual. There's quite a lot of old temples and houses of worship buried beneath many old cities, including Jerusalem. That Russian Orthodox church you mention might be centuries old, or it might be a pre-existing space that's being put to a new use. It's the same in Rome, Mexico City, and many other places. People want more room, or the ground sinks, or a disaster levels the town, so they just build on top of whatever's already there, and repeating this over the centuries builds up strata. So it's not really useful to point to "underground temples" as a barometer of political feeling in this case. Space is limited and they've already got room underground, so why not use it?

[alixkat]

That was not really my point and in ancient locations there are certainly going to be quite literally underground churches or temples underneath the ground.

In this context however, Shamir was discussing how quite literally one Orthodox Church was driven underground because of above-ground persecution and to illustrate how there are specific limitations on Christian worship within Israel that force Christianity literally and figuratively to go underground.

In essence he was attempting to debunk the notion that Christians and Jews are such intimate bedfellows inside Israel.

[rami_raksab]

Every country, unfortunately, suffers from a small number of militant extremists. In some unhappy cases, such as Iran or Zimbabwe, they run the government, and since the majority of people usually don't want to follow them, they tend to rule by outlawing free press and using military force to quash dissenters. In democratic nations like the U.S., Britain or Israel, that fringe doesn't run the country or control the press, but they get to have a say in Parliament like everyone else, and in the meantime some of them turn to terrorism. It is very horrible and sad

[arabianrose]

I'm not sure if you noticed how I made no real effort at making comments on this article, but somehow you go ahead and respond to things which I did not even say... or imply.

The headlined "Jews for Jesus" is intended to be just as awkward as the two or three other sentences in this post, which really do not provide for much of anything, let alone an argument.

But thanks for your endeavor at clarifying things.