Airport Chaplains

The Rev. Frank Colladay Jr. stood at the end of the gate waiting. On the arriving plane was a passenger whose husband had just died of a heart attack on another flight. Her name was Linda Gilbert. The two had never met before.

Colladay's parish happens to be the world's busiest airport. His flock consists of people passing through who might need comfort, spiritual advice, or someone to pray with.

Read More...

The Sale That Stole Thanksgiving

My feelings go beyond mere nostalgia for Thanksgivings past. Our nationally observed holidays erode, gradually but certainly, with every wave of unending commerce. It's a regrettable and embarrassing move that suggests what we value most is not in fact family, religion, history, or even the cherished notion that God has blessed America. Instead, for us there is no day so sacred that it would keep us from standing in long lines under the glow of fluorescent lights to get a flat-screen TV…while others must stock the shelves and man the registers.

Read More...

Syria's Refugee Crisis Worst since Rwanda Genocide, Christians Respond with Help and Hope

On a desert hillside, 225 miles from their bombed-out homes in Syria, a half-dozen refugee fathers and sons have a modest winterization project going on.

Using lumber scrounged from pallets, plus a few rugs and canvas scraps, they tack together a vestibule for an 18-by-32-foot tent that 16 family members will share. The vestibule will help keep freezing winds out of the main living area, which is warmed by one small propane heater. Everyone will sleep on thick foam mattresses with a thin rug between those and the rocky ground.

"Winter is close," says Anas Mustafa Halif, 30, through an interpreter. "We have no clothing, no shelter, no fuel for heating, or even firewood. We can manage such hardships. We move around. But the children? It's very difficult for the children."

About 50 tents comprise this makeshift camp. Most of the Syrians here fled from the outskirts of Hama, a northern city that's been hit hard by Syria's two-and-a-half-year civil war. In fact, 45 are relatives or friends from the same neighborhood. They've landed on the east edge of Amman, opting for this grim arrangement over official refugee camps: Za'atari, to the north, is overrun with more than 130,000 people.

Read More...

Relief Team Seeks Remote Filipino Villages in Need

Social media and news programs around the world have reported on relief teams entering Filipino communities devastated by Typhoon Haiyan. But hundreds of other villages in extremely isolated areas have yet to see any relief. 

Many of these villages are tucked away in northern Cebu's rolling hills. They can be found down winding, bumping roads barely wide enough for vehicles to traverse. They are the villages that Southern Baptist relief teams hope to find.

While millions of dollars in relief aid is flowing into some hard-hit areas, many smaller communities must fend for themselves.

People in remote areas far from the main roads often are neglected for one to two weeks in the aftermath of a major disaster, said Larry Shine, a member of the four-man Baptist Global Response team sent to Cebu Island. The team's goal is to go into areas not highlighted in the media and partner with local pastors to bring relief to neglected communities.

Read More...

Southern Baptist Volunteers Respond Quickly to Midwest Storm System Damage

An approaching tornado interrupted worship at First Baptist Church in Washington, Ill., Nov. 17, leading Pastor Josh Monda to shepherd his congregation to shelter in the basement and ensure all were out of harm's way."

We stepped outside, and you could see the updraft pulling into the storm," said Monda. "We saw the tornado form and began moving through the neighborhood where we knew several of our members live."

A church member was hospitalized with injuries from the storm. Four homes of members were destroyed and other residences were damaged as the tornado passed approximately one-quarter mile from the church, Monda said. The church building received no damage.

"We went out and started to help people. We pulled a couple of people from the wreckage of their homes and prayed with them. Some of our members tried to make it home but could not. It was a tough situation. We pray we will be able to help people, but more than that, also share the Gospel," Monda said.

Read More...

The End of Life

My eye is drawn to the numbers that flash on and off on the monitor. Over time I have been able to figure out what the numbers mean. On this machine the top one is the heart rate and this man’s rate seems a bit high to me. I think that means his heart is trying to over compensate for other problems. The next one down is the blood oxygen level. His is looking good. After that is blood pressure. Both numbers seem high but I don’t understand the implications of that. The number on the bottom of the monitor is the one I have been paying a lot of attention to. It is my friend’s breathing rate. He is hooked up to a ventilator that is making sure he gets enough oxygen into his blood stream and circulating around his body. Even if his blood pressure was next to nothing, the ventilator would move enough blood around his system to keep him alive. Today his breathing rate is in the 20’s. I’ve learned that the minimum set on the machine is 12 breaths a minute. Since the number is higher than 12, he is breathing on his own. When they take him off of the ventilator his lungs will continue to draw breath. This is good and bad.

Where there is life there is hope. I have always believed that. However a large part of my friend’s body does not work because cancer has destroyed much of it. His systems are breaking down. If God doesn’t have a miracle prepared for him, it would be better for his family if he stopped breathing quickly. The end of life is really sad, and especially hard on the families who wait by the bedside of a loved one. I have waited with family members for many days. It can be very hard. Sometimes the wait for that last breath can be excruciating.  

My friend passed away in the evening after the doctors removed the ventilator.

Please pray for his family and everyone who is facing The End of Life.

Peace, Pastor Bill

Endless Path of Misery in the Philippines

After abandoning her van and walking for eight hours "over electrical posts and passing by dead people along the way," Mary Ann Zamora finally arrived in Tacloban, one of the Philippine cities worst hit by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), one of the world's strongest storms on record.

"The way we took last night looks like an endless path of misery. There are survivors approaching me, all are in tears, to ask for favors to send SMS for their worried relatives," emailed Zamora, an emergency communications worker for World Vision, to CT from Tacloban, the highly urbanized capital of the province of Leyte (approximately 360 miles southeast of Manila).

Christian relief agencies, especially ones in Asia, were mobilizing teams to provide shelter, food, and medical care. Philippine officials say they expect the death toll to be as high as 10,000 in Tacloban alone. Air transports are bringing in blankets, plastic sheeting for shelters.

Read More...

Flooded by a Storm, Then by Grace

My husband and I stood at the front door and paused. We knew that we'd reached a watershed moment—literally. With one turn of the key, nothing in our lives would stay the same. And although there was nothing we could do but step inside, we stopped, as if doing so would keep our nightmare from becoming a reality.

The storm surge of Hurricane Sandy dumped more than 4 feet of water into the first floor of our home. Our living room, dining room, kitchen, and bathroom had absorbed a mix of ocean water, diesel fuel, raw sewage, and whatever else the Atlantic Ocean had to offer on October 29, 2012. We knew that the water had receded, but we had no idea what our lives looked like on the other side of that door.

Read More...

Nobel Prize Winners Highlight Universe's Design

Discovery of the so-called "God particle" not only helped two physicists win this year's Nobel Prize, it also unwittingly bolstered the arguments of the Intelligent Design movement, according to Southern Baptist scientists.

The particle, whose scientific name is the Higgs boson, derives its popular name from the title of the 1993 book, "God Particle," by atheist physicist Leon Lederman. However, "a closer consideration of the function and properties of the Higgs boson is very enlightening from a theistic perspective," Bruce Gordon, associate professor of the history and philosophy of science at Houston Baptist University, told Baptist Press in an email interview.

Read More...

Baptist's Continuing to Help People Impacted by Sandy

In the picturesque coastal village of Freeport on Long Island where superstorm Sandy's surge flooded homes with as much as eight feet of water, neighborhoods look back to normal -- at least on the outside.

Eleven months after the storm, streets are clear of debris and most of the dumpsters that were filled with saltwater-soaked furniture, appliances and ruined contents of homes are gone. But pod storage containers still sit on driveways as homeowners work on the interiors of their homes. One local refers to the sight as the "new normal."

Freeport is among the many affected areas where volunteer teams are working in New York and New Jersey to help homeowners put their lives back together. Southern Baptist Disaster Relief (SBDR) is part of the effort.

Read More...

Senate Chaplain Rebukes Congress

The disapproval comes from angry constituents, baffled party elders and colleagues on the other side of the Capitol. But nowhere have senators found criticism more personal or immediate than right inside their own chamber every morning when the chaplain delivers the opening prayer.

“Save us from the madness,” the chaplain, a Seventh-day Adventist, former Navy rear admiral and collector of brightly colored bow ties named Barry C. Black, said one day late last week as he warmed up into what became an epic ministerial scolding.

Read More...

Women's Retreat This Saturday at FBC Rahway

Telugu Vacation Bible School Video

Women's Conference Oct 5th

Syrian Christians Caught in the Middle

Syria’s 2 million Christians face an intolerable dilemma. The bad option is for Bashar al-Assad to retain his brutal grip on power. The worse option — for Chistians, at least — is for Assad’s dictatorship to fall.

As some have predicted, persecution of the country’s Christian minority is escalating as the civil war spreads. Islamists, who now dominate the opposition, have embarked on a bloody campaign of genocide against Christians, who constitute about 10 percent of the population.

“As for the larger conflict, the Christians are caught in the middle,”says Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. “The churches have not allied with the Assad regime. They have no armed protector, inside or outside the country, and they have no militias of their own. But they are not simply suffering collateral damage. They are being deliberately targeted in a religious purification campaign — one that the United States government finds convenient to overlook as it supports Syria’s rebels and praises Saudi Arabia as one of our ‘closest partners.’”

Read More...

Cross Violates Dangerous Weapons Law?!

(For many years I have handed out Bibles at public events in Rahway. I too have been harassed by the event organizers, so this story is not as strange as it might appear)

A Christian evangelist witnessing at a public festival in North Carolina this past weekend was forced to put away a wooden cross that he was holding as police asserted that it could be considered a “dangerous weapon.”

Brothers Jesse and Matthew Boyd, along with friend Kent Blalock, attended the 32nd annual Historic Morganton Festival on Saturday to open-air preach, distribute Gospel literature and hold Scripture-based signs as a witness to attendees. Matthew carried a small 3-pound wooden cross that bears the question “Are You Ready?” and folds away when not in use.

The men state that even before they attended the event, they became aware that there could be problems in light of the festival rules, which barred free speech activity on the streets. In turn, Jesse contacted City Attorney Louis Vinay to express concern, sending him a compilation of relevant case law that protected free speech activity at public events.

Most notably, the evangelists–and anyone else who wished to engage in free speech–would have been required to stand in a “free speech zone,” which was located two blocks outside of the event and away from the crowds.

Read More...

Christian City in Syria Changes Hands Three Times

One of the few places in the world where the language of Jesus is still spoken has become the latest focal point of Syria's ongoing civil war.

The historic pilgrimage destination of Maaloula, a Christian mountain village and UNESCO site located about 40 miles north of Damascus, has exchanged hands three times in six days as Syrian forces and rebels battle to control a key road leading to Homs.

Despite assurances that Christian targets would be spared damage, rebels destroyed crosses on one of Maaloula's famous monasteries, causing a local priest to label the attack as a "declaration of war against the Christian community." Some residents claim rebels have threatened Christians with death if they do not convert to Islam,reports the Associated Press.

Read More...

The Women of Duck Dynasty

Who could have ever predicted that the highest rated show on television would be a reality series about a family who makes duck calls?

For over a year now, Duck Dynasty has forsaken all the reality show formulas, instead focusing on a Christian family living in the middle of Louisiana. There are no cat fights, no hot tub makeout scenes, no eliminations, no barely dressed women.

While you might expect a show about a Southern family of self-avowed "rednecks" to be an unfriendly environment for women, it is quite the opposite. The women of Duck Dynasty are respected, and they are strong.

Read More...

Happy Eighth Anniversary Telugu Service

Our Telugu Service celebrated its Eighth Anniversary this weekend.

Above is a video of the children singing on Sunday.

Shout to the Lord!

Happy Friday!

Pray for Asia Bibi to be Released

I’m the victim of a cruel, collective injustice.

I’ve been locked up, handcuffed and chained, banished from the world and waiting to die. I don’t know how long I’ve got left to live. Every time my cell door opens my heart beats faster. My life is in God’s hands and I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. It’s a brutal, cruel existence. But I am innocent. I’m guilty only of being presumed guilty. I’m starting to wonder whether being a Christian in Pakistan today is not just a failing, or a mark against you, but actually a crime.

To her neighbors, Aasiya Noreen “Asia” Bibi, a poor mother of five in the tiny village of Ittan Wali in central Pakistan, was guilty — guilty of being Christian in a nation that is 97% Muslim. For four years she has languished in a prison cell for this, facing death by hanging. Her new memoir, “Blasphemy,” was dictated to her husband from jail, who relayed it to French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet. Fifty percent of the proceeds the book will go to support Bibi and her family. Tollet says the situation is dire. Embarrassed by Bibi’s case but still refusing to release her because of angry protests by extremists, the Pakistan government has transferred her to a more remote prison, hoping the 42-year-old dies quietly behind bars, perhaps poisoned by another inmate. Already two government officials who have spoken out on her behalf have been murdered, including Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti, who was killed by the Taliban. In this excerpt, Bibi explains the simple “transgression” that led to her plight.

Read More...

Every Three Days a Church is Built in Romania

Romania is in the middle of a church-building boom, with some 10 new places of worship completed every month, and one vast cathedral slowly taking shape. But some Romanians take issue with the expense, in one of Europe's poorest countries - and particularly the use of funds from the public purse.

Read More...

Pray for the Christians of Egypt

The fire burned all night long. It was only after desperate town residents borrowed the keys to a firetruck that they were able to quell the blaze. By then, the evangelical church was all but destroyed.

It was one of more than 60 churches that have been attacked, vandalized and in many cases set aflame across Egypt in a surge of violence against Christians that has followed the bloody Aug. 14 raid by Egyptian security forces on two Islamist protest camps in Cairo.

Read More...

Vacation Bible School Rolls On

A Video from the 2nd week of Vacation Bible School!

Why was New York State so Weird in the 19th Century?

And just like that, America was haunted. When exactly the apparitions began appearing no one could say for sure. It was the middle of the 19th century — maybe 1848? This was the year that the young Fox sisters, Maggie and Kate, began communicating with the ghost of a murdered man who had been buried in the cellar of their new house in Hydesville, New York. The girls listened to his frantic rappings beneath the floorboards and created a Morse code of sorts to parse the meaning. Their mother called in the neighbors to witness her daughters’ supernatural powers and the neighbors’ excited whispers stretched to surrounding towns. They particularly excited Amy and Isaac Post, a progressive Quaker couple who were friends of the Fox family. The Posts relocated Kate and Maggie to their home in Rochester and soon the girls were performing séances for the Posts’ reformist friends. Strangely, the rappings followed them all the way there. The Rochester rappings became known all over the country, talked about by William Cullen Bryant and P.T. Barnum and Mary Todd Lincoln. The Fox sisters — now famous mediums — had started a movement. They were just 12 and 15 years old.

Read More...

Old Rugged Cross - Brad Paisley

Happy Friday!

The End of All Things

Why do things have to end? Jobs come to an end, relationships go up in smoke, family moves away, etc… One could argue that when one thing ends, something better begins. Baloney, endings stink. New beginnings are all well and good, but I don’t like it when something that I think is good ends. My children are at the point where they are getting closer and closer to the day they move out and continue life without Betsy and me. I’m going to miss them. I’m going to be unhappy when this phase of our family life ends. I understand why it has to. I understand the benefits of my children going off on their own. I still don’t like the prospect of an important part of my life ending.

Immediately after the distress of those days;

“‘the sun will be darkened,

    and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
    and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. Matthew 24:29 NIV

  

The Bible talks a lot about endings. In the above passage, Jesus talks about the destruction of Jerusalem, the tearing down of the Temple and the return of the “Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky”. I look forward to meeting Jesus on his return to our world, but I’m not too thrilled about all of the end talk. The Bible speaks about lots of things that are going to end before Jesus returns. Cities, civilizations, the Sun, Moon and the Stars. It’s all going to be swept away when God’s great Day of Judgment comes.

 

Does that mean that my home disappear from the cosmos for all eternity? Yes.

What about my flower garden? It’s really pretty and I would hate to see anything bad happen to it. Forget it buddy, its Gone.

How about all of the stars, planets and galaxies I see in my telescope? Sorry Bill, but it’s all Caput.

The funny thing is modern physics predicts this very same thing. Entropy is defined as a measure of the disorder of things in a system. Increasing entropy is when the number of variables increases, which is happening as the universe expands. Decreasing entropy is when the number of variables decreases, which happens at the center of the sun. Increasing entropy leads to less interaction between objects. Decreasing entropy leads to increased interaction. So, if you shove lots of stuff together into a star, the stuff interacts, gets energized and produces light and heat. If you separate the stuff of the expanding cosmos by greater and greater distances, light and heat will not be produced. The universe will get cold and dark. This is the current mathematical model for the future of the universe. Increasing entropy means no more flower gardens.

“I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” Revelation 21:2 NIV.

The good news is, the Bible says at the end of all things there will be a new beginning. The universe will be remade into a new creation. Everything will be set right, and there will no longer be suffering, pain or death. The new cosmos predicted in the scriptures will be a heavenly cosmos. This will be bad for those of us who don’t like endings. But it gives us hope for a happy ending. Which is a lot better than a universe that ends up cold and dark.

God bless you,

Pastor Bill

Telugu Vacation Bible Starts This Sunday

VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL 2013 :- FBCTS VBS-Starting from August4th Theme :-Facing Fear,Trusting GOD Theme Verse:-2Timothy  1:7 Dates:-  August  4th,11th,18th,25th,2013 Final performance day Sept 1st.(total 5 Sundays) Timings:-3:00pm-6:00pm Ages:2yrs -14years. Age Groups  1.4-5yrs.- 2.6-7yrs :- 3. 8-9 Yrs 4.10-12yrs :-(preteens) Bible lessons, Bible verses, Songs, Activities, Bible Quizzes, Games . Tell your friends and  bring your children ,Great time for kids to learn word of God  in a very creative and active way. Organized by FBCTS Teachers:-   ( WE HAVE VISITING TEACHERS COMING) Volunteers needed.

First Baptist Church Telugu Service,

177 Elm Ave            
Rahway, NJ 07065 USA, Further details:-contact 973-979-3536     

Immigrant Pastors Have Difficulty Obtaining Visa's

Immigration officials balked at renewing the religious worker visa for Daniel Carrillo. They doubted that his sponsoring church had sufficient funds to pay him.

In 2011, the Toronto native moved to San Antonio to help plant a church for the Spanish-speaking Nazarene congregation he had pastored for six years in Kentucky. After serving the new English-speaking congregation for two months, Carillo learned that immigration officials had refused to renew his R-1 (religious worker) visa for another 30 months. They told him he must leave the country within 15 days.

With the help of World Relief immigration attorney Kedri Metzger, Carrillo successfully reapplied for an R-1 visa and moved back to San Antonio in October 2012 with his Honduran-born wife, Carolina, and their 7-year-old son, Joshua. This time, Carillo's visa affirms that he will be paid from the deeper pockets of the Nazarene district, rather than New Vision Community Church, the newly planted San Antonio congregation.

"We were doing everything to the letter of the law," says Carrillo, 34. "We want to make sure churches understand there are a lot of ministers brought in from the outside who are in the same predicament as us, sacrificing so much to work for the Lord."

Read More...

Who Sends the Most Missionaries? Statistics on Mission

A new study reveals how the missions field continues to become increasingly global—in some surprising ways. One example: South Korea has lost its No. 2 sending spot to four unlikely contenders.

The Center for the Study of Global Christian (CSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary calculates that Christians sent out approximately 400,000 international missionaries in 2010. And nearly half of the world's top missionary-sending countries are now located in the global South.

Read More...

Love and Acceptance Workshop on Saturday

The Unseen Universe

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:18 NIV.

The Sun explodes. It happens more than you think. Massive amounts of pure energy and energized particles explode out of the surface of the Sun and race towards the Earth. SOHO, a Sun scanning spacecraft, detects the explosion and sends a warning to the Earth. Owners of communication satellite’s scramble to protect their multi-million dollar investments before the waves of energy smash into them. Most of the powerful wave is deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field. Some of it gets through and hits our atmosphere, causing interference on cell phones and other communication devices. Some of the radiation hits us, but we don’t know it. In fact, we don’t know anything about the explosions. They all happen in frequencies of light that are outside of the ability of our eyes to detect them. If it wasn’t for SOHO and other space observatories we wouldn’t know until the waves of energy did something, like mess up the signal on our satellite televisions. The explosions on our Sun happen in the Gamma Ray and X-Ray frequencies, which are part of the unseen universe.

The universe is full of wonderful objects that we cannot see with our own eyes. Areas with active star formation are often obscured by clouds of gas and dust. The center of our Milky Way Galaxy is one of these places. I have a star chart with an x on it marking Sagittarius A, the center of the galaxy. When I turn my telescope on it, I see a couple of stars. What I should be seeing is millions of stars! We know that there are millions of stars there because we have infrared telescopes that can ‘see’ through the obscuring clouds. Visual frequencies of light are absorbed by the clouds. The infrared frequency is not. The same goes for the majority of frequencies of light. We can only see a small fraction of what is going on in the universe. Fortunately we have marvelous machines that can bring the galaxy to life for us, like the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Hebrew patriarch Abraham was told by God to leave his home in the vicinity of Babylon and go to a faraway place. A place flowing with milk and honey, where his children and his children’s children would flourish forever. The Bible says that this showed Abraham had faith in God. Joseph, of the Technicolor dream coat, saw and interpreted dreams that showed he would rise to a position of power and authority. His brothers scoffed, but Joseph ended up in a position where he could save his family from famine. The female followers of Jesus met the risen Lord on Easter Sunday morning. When they told their male colleagues this, they were laughed at. But the living Jesus soon appeared, much to the chagrin of the disciples.

These stories from the Bible speak to us of the power of belief in the unseen among the faithful of God. We people of faith are convinced that God is present with us all of the time. I can’t prove this, like modern science can prove that high energy radiation is exploding out of the Sun. But I believe with all of my heart that I am not alone. God speaks to me, and I speak to God on a regular basis. And this all happens as a part of the unseen universe. God has decided that He will operate in such a way as to be omnipresent, but unseen to our eyes. God’s spiritual presence is everywhere at all times. And yet, we have to have faith in that unseen presence in order to access the divine person. God knows all about us, sees our every action, and hears our every thought. Yet to speak with Him, we need to believe in that which we cannot see.

The unseen universe is all around us. That means that God is here and now. We don’t need advanced technology to access Him. We just need to reach out and He will reach back.

“Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” 1 Peter 1:8-9 NIV.

God bless you,

Pastor Bill

Jesus is Not the most Controversial Topic on Wikipedia

The results of Wikipedia's "edit wars" are in: Former president George W. Bush is the most controversial topic in the English language.

That's according to Cornell researchers who ranked the web's most controversial topics according to their editing history on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone—and everyone—can edit. They broke the data down into general language sets, and the list of the top 10 most controversial topics in English are as follows:

1. George W. Bush
2. Anarchism
3. Muhammad
4. List of WWE personnel
5. Global warming
6. Circumcision
7. United States
8. Jesus
9. Race and intelligence
10. Christianity

Read More...

VBS Telugu Service Starting August 3rd

Catholics Fleeing Vietnam

Australia is experiencing an influx of Catholics fleeing Vietnam due to persecution this year, the International Christian Concern group is reporting.

Australian Immigration Department figures show a 30-fold increase of Vietnamese seeking asylum in the country.

This week a boat of 84 people, mainly Vietnamese, was intercepted 50 kilometers (30 miles) off the Australian coast and brought ashore.

Read More...

Wonderful Week of VBS

Video of Friday's action at VBS.

Day One of VBS - Registration Desk

We Welcome VBS Missionaries from South Carolina

Volunteers from First Baptist Church of Clearwater, South Carolina have come up to help us with this week's Vacation Bible School! Here they are giving out snow cones and balloons before the festivities start at 5 PM. Please pray for our outreach efforts in Rahway.

VBS / Programa de Verano

Vacation Bible School Week

Egyptian Christians Cheer Removal of Morsi

When Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood was elected as Egypt's first post-revolutionary president, most Christians gritted their teeth and hoped for the best. After a year of sectarian tension, deteriorating economic conditions, and deep political polarization, they are happy to see him go.

"At last, Egypt is now free from the oppressive rule of the Muslim Brotherhood!" wrote Anglican Bishop Mouneer Hanna Anis of the Episcopal Diocese of Egypt and North Africa.

His words could be echoed by the multitudes that filled Tahrir Square and surrounded the presidential palace on June 30. According to the Rebel Movement which led the protests, 22 million Egyptians gave their signature to demand early presidential elections.

"Christians and Muslims alike expressed their extreme and accumulated anger at Morsi's regime," said Sidhom.

Continue Reading...