Over 70 pastors signed recently a letter to affirm that President Barack Obama is a Christian. The letter also urged public officials, religious leaders and media to ignore remarks that distort Obama’s “unwavering” Christianity.

The letter, which was sent out by the Eleison Group included signatories such as Joel Hunter, TD Jakes and David Gushee among others. Many of the signatories said they had prayed and worshiped with Obama, CBN News said.

The letter also said that the signatories come from diverse ideological and political backgrounds and noted, “As Christian pastors and leaders we believe that fellow Christians need to be an encouragement to those who call Christ their savior, not question the veracity of their faith,” CBN News said.

Last week a poll showed that 18 percent of Americans think Obama is Muslim, compared to 11 percent last year. Another poll showed 34 percent of Americans say Obama is Christian, down from 48 percent the year before, The Hill said.

Obama’s job approval rating among Protestant Christians has gone down from last year at 43 percent, making them the group that approves of Obama the least, except for the Mormons, The Hill said.

Leith Anderson, president of NAE cited Romans 10:9 which is about a confession of faith in Jesus and concluded, “I’ve never heard President Obama describe himself as anything other than a Christian. He should know better than anyone else,” CBN News said.

The signatories to the letter represented some seven Protestant denominations among other religious groups. In the letter, they said “the personal faith of our leaders should not be up for debate,” The Hill said.

In Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope, Obama said his biological father was an atheist and his mother, agnostic. His stepfather was a “nominal Muslim,” and he was not raised in a religious home, although his mother’s parents (who raised him to a large degree) were Baptist and Methodist. In his 20s Obama embraced Christianity and joined the church of Jeremiah Wright, the Huffington Post said.

According to the Huffington Post, “It’s irrelevant whether Barack Obama is a Christian or a Muslim — as long as he governs like he’s neither.”

Even as Christian aid groups like World Vision and Operation Mobilization continue to deliver aid to flood victims in Pakistan, the Taliban has hinted that foreign aid workers will be targets for attack.

Meanwhile the Pakistan government ordered the evacuation of Thatta, 45 miles east of Karachi, after a portion of the Indus Riverbank broke down nearby due to both receding floodwaters that flowed down the Indus and high tides from the Arabian Sea, Reuters said.

A U.S. official said the violent threats to aid workers came from Tehrik-e-Taliban, perhaps the nation’s most extreme militant group, the Daily News said. Meanwhile extremist-linked charities are stepping up relief work to exploit the situation by gaining popular support, Reuters said.

Most of the floodwaters in the country have receded from the monsoon that killed some 1,500, rendered five million homeless, and affected some 17 million with farms submerged and roads and bridges destroyed, the Daily News said.

There is also the danger of epidemics. Victims urgently need clean drinking water and fresh food. Critics say relief is too slow, even as the two-year-old Pakistani civilian government is stretching itself,   Reuters said.

World Vision’s Mike Bailey said a big difficulty is getting the aid to the victims. Bailey said, “In the northern  province, the one that was hit over three weeks ago, the estimates are as many as half the people that were affected still haven’t been reached with any aid at all,” CBN said.

Bailey said his workers have witnessed dangerous conditions in Pakistan relief camps even as he admits, “The numbers that we are reaching now as an international community are still very much smaller than the people in need,” CBN said.

OM noted the need for prepared meals for flood victims and hired a local cook. They have also distributed clothes, shoes and tents among others. Observing the many people who waited for hospital treatment, they opened a clinic for immediate needs such as fever, snakebites, stomach pains, and skin infections, ChristianNewswire said.

Om is appealing for financial resources for food and supplies for 3,000 more Pakistani families and say just $35 will provide two weeks of food for a family of six. Interested donors may click “Pakistan Flood Relief” at www.omusa.org, ChristianNewswire said.

The Pakistan government promised to clamp down on extremist-linked charities. They are also expected to request that the IMF lessen restrictions on a loan of $11 billion that was approved in 2008, Reuters said.

Analysts are concerned about the fallout that may be generated by the flood even as the U.S. is trying to gain support in the war against militants in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan. Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress said, “This is likely to unfold over weeks if not months. It is too soon to predict what the political implications are,” Reuters said.

Former President Jimmy Carter will leave for North Korea to intercede for the release of a U.S. Christian man who was sentenced to eight years of hard labor for illegally crossing the border from China.

Carter hopes to bring home Aijalon Mahli Gomes, 30, later this week. Gomes, who is from Mattapan, Boston, was working as an English teacher in South Korea. He was arrested by North Korean soldiers last February, the Christian Science Monitor said.

In April when Gomes received his prison sentence, he tried to commit suicide shortly after, the Christian Science Monitor said. Gomes was also fined $700,000, CBN News said. Although it is not known why he entered North Korea, he had joined rallies in Seoul in the past to support Robert Park, a fellow Christian, the Boston Globe said.

Park had entered North Korea from China in order to bring public attention to the human rights violations that are being committed in the North. He was expelled from the country after some 40 days, the Boston Globe said.

Annie Sarrow of Mattapan, who is Gomes’s grandmother expressed worry but said, “We’re very hopeful. I’m just thanking God for what I’ve seen on the news (about Carter’s visit).’’ Sarrow said Gomes is, “a good kid, good person, who loves people,’’ the Boston Globe said.

Analysts say Carter’s mission may reap diplomatic gains for North Korea after tensions rose last March when the North was blamed for the torpedoing a South Korean warship killing 46 sailors, the Boston Globe said.

Last week the U.S. State Department tried to obtain Gomes release with no success, but a senior official of the department said North Korea promised to free Gomes if Carter came, CBN News said.

The former president’s visit may, one analyst said, open doors to the resumption of talks about the country’s nuclear weapons program. Kim Yong Hyun of Dongguk University, Seoul said, “This signals US willingness to become more flexible in its policy on North Korea…Carter’s symbolic importance in North Korea as the person who met the founder also means North Korea will offer much more than releasing Gomes,’’ the Boston Globe said.

However other experts disagree saying, “Carter’s trip should not be seen as a change in US policy toward Pyongyang and will likely not yield any breakthrough in what most see as a diplomatic stalemate between the two sides,” the Christian Science Monitor said, quoting the journal Foreign Policy.

Sixteen years ago Carter successfully defused the first Korean nuclear crisis when he met with North Korea’s Kim Il-sung who died a month later, and was succeeded by his son Kim Jong-il, the Christian Science Monitor said.

The meeting led to the 1994 Geneva agreement for North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program in exchange for substantial aid. In 2002 North Korea was found to be producing warheads with enriched uranium at their core, the Christian Science Monitor said.

Carter will stay overnight in Pyongyang but it is not known if he will meet North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il. Nonetheless, Carter’s visit will register propaganda capital among its people. Ha Tae-keung of North Korea Open Radio said, “One of the reasons for North Korea to receive Carter is …the North Korean people…can interpret this as the Obama administration giving in to the North Korean regime,” the Christian Science Monitor said.

Christians in Zimbabwe are being mobilized to set the groundwork for national reconciliation and healing, even as the nation embarks on writing a new constitution.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said, “You can’t have healing without the church playing a very moral role, a leading role. I think it would be a misplacement of priorities to play the church as a political organization rather than as a spiritual organization which has an important place in a country where 80 percent are Christian,” CBN News said.

Zimbabwe will undergo a three-month outreach to gather input from the citizenry through a referendum on what the new constitution should contain, CBN said.

Alex Chisangco, who chairs the African Centre for Law and Justice, is among those working to mobilize Zimbabwean Christians to participate actively in the making of the new constitution. Chisango said, “This is really one of the greatest windows of opportunity,” CBN said.

Government officials have met with Chisango and Jordan Sekulow, director of international operations for the American Center of the ACLJ to further discuss the constitution process, CBN said.

The drafting of a new constitution is considered a good step forward after Zimbabwe had undergone years of unrest, inflation and political upheaval, CBN said.

While the economy seems to be stabilizing, unemployment nonetheless remains at 90 percent, and while government power is currently shared by two political parties, they are often at odds and the nation continues to be divided, CBN said.

Currently a Global Political Agreement is in force which has provided a framework of constitutional reforms that are necessary so that elections slated to follow the constitutional reforms will be credible and the political situation will be stable, All Africa said.

On one end there is President Mugabe, and on the other end, Prime Minister Tsvangirai. Mugabe would like elections to be held, even before any referendum is completed, and is resisting the involvement of South African Development Community in the process, VOA said.

Tsvangirai would like elections to be held after the referendum, and only if the conditions are compliant to ensure fair and free elections, monitored by the SADC, who are the guarantors of the GPA, VOA said.

Tsvangirai considers it a positive development that South African President Jacob Zuma’s report included the issue of Zimbawe’s election during the SADC summit, VOA said.

Chisango said, “We are ultimately the answer. We should not be part of the problem. Neither should we just sit there as part of the victims. But we should rise above the bitterness, rise above the wounds and woundedness, and actually become the solution,” CBN said.

Another Christian leader involved in the process is Shingi Munyeza, director of African Sun Limited. The owner of numerous hotel chains, Munyeza noted that if Zimbabwe focuses on its Christian majority population and galvanizes the spiritual element, the populace can be mobilized to further their own peace, CBN said.

Clean up programs

To boost the country’s self image, the ACLJ has launched a nationwide campaign where local churches, aid groups and government agencies are working together to rid the streets on trash, CBN said.

The effort is being coordinated by Joshua Chiweda of Revival Ministries International, who has also been meeting with churches to encourage their participation in rebuilding the country, CBN said.

Chiweda said, “Christianity is not just people going to church but it is a way of life which must be seen and must be a reflection of their daily practices,” CBN said.

Chisango said, “We believe that Zimbabwe ultimately will be a nation that will forgive,” CBN said.

British columnist and former atheist, Peter Hitchens, has written a book about his conversion to Christianity.

Hitchens, a London Mail political columnist and former Marxist revolutionary, has penned “The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith.” The book has a different subtitle in the U.K., namely Why Faith is the Foundation of Civilization, the Washington Times said.

A Cain and Abel scenario has unfolded with Hitchens’ new faith. His older brother Christopher, who remains an atheist, and he have had heated public debates. Christopher has authored the tome God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, CBN News said.

Both brothers were raised in a Christian home with a devoutly Baptist grandfather. Their paternal grandmother, whom they never met, was Anglican. Peter said they had “an extremely religiously conscious household,” CBN News said.

Both brothers became Marxists but today Peter considers himself a conservative member of the Church of England. He attends a small church that still uses an “old prayer book,” the Washington Times said.

The brothers are estranged. Peter suggests that his brother is a “repressed seeker”. He hopes his brother “might one day arrive at some sort of acceptance that belief in God is not necessarily a character fault – and that religion does not poison everything,” the Washington Times said.

Peter said that when he was an atheist, “We were full of our own righteousness. We knew what was right. We knew we were right. We knew we were good. We defined our own goodness,” CBN News said.

He had no Christian friends at the time. “There is a lot of scorn in revolutionary socialism.  There’s a lot of scorn for the people who aren’t up for it. There is a lot of scorn for the people who are opposed to it. There’s a feeling that you are the vanguard and you know best, and everyone else is ignorant and stupid,” CBN News said.

“You see that scorn in the new atheists, in the way they treat their opponents – not with any kind of respect at all. They still act as if Christianity is a kind of stupid aberration that only an idiot could follow,”    CBN News said.

Peter’s return to Christian faith took place in stages through the years. There was a time he remembers distinctly when he genuinely felt a fear of God though he was still an atheist. He was looking at Rogier van der Weyden’s painting, The Last Judgment, depicting the terror of Hell. ”One of them was actually vomiting with fright,” Hitchens told CBN News.

At that point, Peter feared for himself. “One of my reasons for my change is that I am scared. But then again, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Ironically, after the CBN interview it was learned that Christopher Hitchens had been diagnosed with cancer, CBN News said.

The Washington Times has speculated, “If Christopher turns out to be right, he won’t be able to tell his brother, “I told you so.” And if he’s wrong, well, he probably won’t be in any mood to admit it.”