A new book will be released in September that takes a deeper look into the faith of teen icon Justin Bieber.

The book, Belieber! Faith, Fame and the Heart of Justin Bieber, is penned by Cathleen Falsani, an award-winning journalist with a specialty on the intersection of spirituality and pop culture. It is being published by Worthy Publishing.

Bieber’s cultural influence on today’s generation is seen to equal—if not exceed—that of the Beatles 50 years before. Despite his overwhelming success, he has remained consistent in his talk of his Christian faith.

Falsani covers Bieber’s story of fame from the time he was spotted on YouTube and also writes about behind-the-scenes observations she has had of the star.

Of her subject, Falsani says, “Justin has a message beyond what many critics quickly dismiss as ‘puppy love’. It is above love, God’s love for everyone. And his fans are listening.”

Bieber is consistent in interviews and TV shows in expressing his beliefs regarding his Christian faith, and talks of hope, gratitude and believing to his millions of fans, including some 11.6 million Twitter followers.

At the recent Teen Choice Awards, Bieber collected his trophy, then told the crowd, “I wanna say that anything is possible if you set your mind to it. You gotta keep God first and always remember to keep family first.” He then made a sweeping gesture to the audience and added, “Jesus loves every one of you!”

While it is not unusual for celebrities to mention God during award shows, it is rare that stars will specifically mention Jesus. This is because there is often a consciousness about image.

To mention God is considered to be more inclusive, and helpful to a celebrity’s image and career. To specifically mention Jesus means the risk of drawing a line.

Bieber, 17, has talked of his faith in Jesus with Rolling Stone, on television, on the red carpet. And it seems that as he matures, he becomes more confident of his own voice—beyond the singing voice, the voice that talks of what is on his mind and what he thinks.

This is a voice that is not worried about image, or about appealing to as wide an audience as he can. Bieber seems unworried about alienating his fans. Because of this, Falsani perceives Bieber to be a new breed in the celebrity world.

Falsani wrote in her RNS column that she perceives Bieber as someone who can express his faith in a way that does not offend others, and he is not defensive in doing so. He comes across as authentic and humble, and his millions of fans around the world are listening when he says, “Jesus loves every one of you.”

Pattie Mallette, Bieber’s mother, is a woman of deep faith who has said in interviews that she believes her son has been called to speak as a voice for this generation.

Falsani, who has done personal interview profiles of Barack Obama, Elie Wiesel, Anne Rice, and Studs Terkel among others, has written the critically acclaimed books The God Factor, The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers, and Sin Boldly.

Falsani said on the book website that in light of the fact that music and film remain the language of today’s generation, she is hopeful that faith leaders and parents will view popular culture with new insight and see it as a means to enhance communication with their children.

A new book is on the market that tracks the history of Christianity from a global perspective—a diversion from the normal coverage of the faith as primarily a Western phenomenon.

The book, Christianity: The Illustrated Guide to 2,000 Years of the Christian Faith, goes further back in time covering the little-known Nestorian Christians up to current Christian phenomena including the Evangelical movement, the First Vatican Council and televangelism, among others, according to its website.

Christianity: The Illustrated Guide is published by Millennium House and authored by various religious experts. Its chief consultant is Prof. Ann Marie Bahr, Department of Philosophy and Religion, South Dakota State University, Newswise said.

The book is an illustrated guide to 2,000 years of history in Christianity, featuring miracles, martyrs, major figures, ideas, faith, events, literature, music, feasts, festivals and mysteries, according to the website.

The book also has superb illustrations including art, architecture, and detailed maps. There are also special features on prayer, church music, Christian tradition, Christian experience and the bible, the website said.

Bahr, who was with the Religion in the Schools Task Force of the American Academy of Religion until 2008, told Newswise the reference book is the first of its kind with its comprehensive coverage. “Millennium House came to me with the idea of doing a high-quality illustrated reference work for libraries on Christianity,” she said.

However, she felt the original book outline focused too much on Christianity from the western historical viewpoint, and suggested that it instead provides a global history of faith, “something that would show how Christianity came to different parts of the world, and when, and how it developed there, and what the status is of Christianity in all parts of the world now,” Bahr told Newswise.

Noting that academics today are more interested in a global picture of Christian history, Bahr told Newswise, “[A]s far as I know, this is the first reference book to use this approach anywhere in the world to telling the history of Christianity.”

Because of this, readers see beyond the misconception that the Christian faith is only a phenomenon of the West. Bahr told Newswise, “It was definitely an attempt to break down this monolithic sense of what the history of Christianity has been and to incorporate the different perspectives of Christians around the world. The story of Christianity cannot be told from a single geographic vantage point.”

Nestorian Christians

Bahr told Newswise that Christianity reached China earlier than what is commonly known through the efforts of the Nestorian Christians, among the earliest and lesser-known missionaries who no longer are in existence today.

Bahr said to Newswise, “Christianity went east before it went west, to a great extent. It’s very relevant to us today because it was along that route that they first met, for example, with Buddhists.”

Noting that religions play a major role in shaping society, Bahr said understanding faith is a major task for 21^st century globalism. She told Newswise, “[W]hat we will be in the future really depends upon whether these traditions can talk to each other, both internally — their differences within each tradition — and externally — the differences between them.”

According to the website, the reference book includes writings on the more recent developments of Christianity including the Evangelicals, radical Christianity, the First Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility, the spread of the others.

Alabama Rep. Gov. Robert Bentley stirred up a hornet’s nest among critics when he spoke at a church recently and said that Americans who are not part of the Christian family are not brothers and sisters.

In his Martin Luther King Jr. Day message, Bentley told parishioners at the King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery that Christians accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and are part of the Christian family, according to CBS News.

Bentley said, “There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit. But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have, if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister,” CBS News reported.

Bentley added, “Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother,” according to CBS News.

Bentley, who is a deacon at First Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, said that although he was elected as a Republican, he will be “the governor of all the people. I am colorblind,” according to UPI.

Atheists upset

Bentley’s comments drew the ire of atheists, including David Silverman, president of American Atheists. Silverman said Bentley’s comments are “bigoted,” and show that Bentley “puts his bible above the Constitution of the United States,” CBS News reported.

Silverman added, “Being the governor of all people means that you are a representative of all people. It certainly does not mean that you abuse your position to push your religion on people who differ from your faith,” according to CBS News.

Bill Nigut, southeast regional director of ADL told CBS News Bentley’s comments are “offensive,” raise the question of whether “non-Christians can expect to receive equal treatment during his tenure as governor,” and “suggest that he is determined to use his new position to proselytize for Christian conversion.”

Nigut told CBS News that if this is the case, “He is dancing dangerously close to a violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids government from promoting the establishment of any religion.”

Choice of words

Rev. David Freeman, senior pastor of Weatherly Heights Baptist Church questioned Bentley’s choice of words saying it “points to one of the greatest failures of fundamentalist Christian theology. The greatest Christian theology entreats us to see all human beings as our sisters and brothers,” UPI reported.

Bentley said, after his speech, that he had no intention to insult anyone, the AP reported.

Gil McKee, a senior pastor at Bentley’s church said, “strong Christian faith is what causes [Bentley] to love other people, no matter who they are, black, white, rich, poor, Christian or not,” according to the UPI.

Immigrants from China are hearing the gospel for the first time in the U.S., and they are embracing it.

World Magazine said Chinese immigrants find love, acceptance and community in Christian churches which become a refuge in a new country. Li Rong Liu, of Fujian, South China says the spirituality seems more real, too.

Liu told World Magazine, “When I was in China, I had heard of Christianity, but I didn’t think I needed it. Now in the U.S., when I’m alone and facing new hardships, here is where I find God.”

When travel restrictions eased in China in 1978, Chinese immigrants to the U.S. rose from 200,000 in 1980 to 1.4 million in 2006. Chinese churches in the U.S. increased from 366 in 1980 to more than 800 today, World Magazine said.

Liu, like many Chinese immigrants, worked as a busboy from early morning until midnight, seven days a week in a New York Chinatown restaurant. After six years he was promoted to sushi chef and works 10 hour days, World Magazine reported.

Two years ago a friend invited Liu to Church of Grace, where he met and bonded with many others from Fujian immigrants. He told World Magazine that he also saw a joy and love that he hadn’t known before.

At a Church of Grace service, Pastor Matthew Ding bases his sermon on Nehemiah 11:6-24, a genealogy of the Israelites who travelled to Jerusalem. The Chinese also treasure lineage and the passing down of teaching, World Magazine said.

Ding told the church, “You came to the U.S. to give your kids a better life, but if you don’t teach them about Christianity, what good will it be? Nothing else will last for eternity,” World Magazine reported.

Chinese culture and grace

The Confucian ethic of hard work and discipline as necessary for success may be admirable, but it does not rest easy with the concept of salvation through faith rather than works. Ding spends a lot of time talking of ‘un dian,” or grace, to drive the point home, World Magazine said,

To get more restaurant workers to church, Ding also holds late services for those working overtime, and has a telephone ministry for some 1,000 Chinese immigrant workers nationwide employed in restaurants, World Magazine reported.

California churches

In San Jose, former restaurant owner Esther Lou founded The Herald Restaurant Gospel Ministry for Chinese immigrants working as waiters, dishwashers and busboys. Today she has over a dozen branches in cities across the U.S., according to World Magazine.

Taiwan, China and communism

But more ironic is Taiwan pastor Matthew Liu of California’s San Gabriel Valley who has a church catering to Chinese immigrants. He is often told, “We have no family here and when we come to your [house church] we feel like we are home,” World Magazine reported.

Perhaps the most compelling story is that of Joshua Yu, 84, who lived in China before and after it turned communist. Yu was reared as a Christian, but when he was 23, Communism came to China, according to World Magazine.

Yu discerned the disingenuousness of the government-controlled Three-Self Church which permitted no one under 18 to enter (Jesus said, “let the children come to me”). Teachings about revelation and lessons about being in the world but not of it, were also censored, World Magazine said.

Then in 1958 Yu and 2,000 others were sent to a “reeducation camp.” They were overworked and underfed (dinner would be one small onion). When Yu was freed in 1979 only 800 had survived, World Magazine reported.

A church in America offered Yu a job (because of his facility with English). In the U.S. he founded the Chinese Christian Testimony Ministry, a publishing firm which translates Chinese testimonies into English, World Magazine says.

According to World Magazine, many books that Yu publishes find their way back into China, where they are reproduced.

A small village in Haiti is enjoying prosperity, education and spiritual wealth because of a Christian ministry that was founded in 1999.

The village of Gramothe, one hour away from Port-au-prince, today has schools, a clinic, a church, water system and homes—a great change from 10 years before, when all they had were five voodoo temples, The Christian Post said.

In 1999, Willem Charles founded Mountain Top Ministries which challenged voodoo in the village where there was no clean water, not enough jobs, and no hope at all, according to The Christian Post.

Give Your Best, a book authored by Andrew DeWitt, tells the story of Charles. DeWitt told The Christian Post, “There are pockets in Haiti that are actually transforming from poverty and voodoo to prosperity and Christianity.”

Charles grew up in a one-room home with nine other people. However, he grew up to become a CNN interpreter, and helped to convey to the world the chaotic presidency of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to The Christian Post.

Other successes Charles enjoyed before founding MTM, according to The Christian Post, included joining Haiti’s national soccer team, plus personal success as a businessman.

Charles started MTM in Gramothe because it was the village on the hill across his childhood home. He knew that 90 percent of its people were jobless, and the teacher in the tiny school had only a third-grade education. Villagers walked a mile to get drinking water from a river where they also bathed and laundered their clothes, The Christian Post said.

Today, there are spigots near the homes of the villagers delivering clean water, reducing disease, and enabling farmers to plant year round instead of depending on rain, increasing their produce fourfold, The Christian Post reported.

Changes with MTM

Today villagers can save money to remodel their homes, and children study up to 12^th grade at the village’s Christian school. According to The Christian Post, a high school diploma is deemed a huge feat in Haiti.

In the book Charles says, “What Haiti needs is freedom and security. Along with that, education will bring jobs, which will bring overall prosperity,” The Christian Post reported.

Voodoo culture

A former colony of France, Haitian slaves of the French colonizers were required to become Catholics. However, the people instead incorporated the Catholic icons into their voodoo religion, according to The Christian Post.

In the book DeWitt wrote, “As a result, Catholicism has a different meaning to the people here in Haiti. In some ways it is synonymous with voodoo.” Charles understood this, and through MTM villagers learned to let voodoo go, The Christian Post said.

For example, a man in the village complained to Charles about the rats in his home which bit his children leaving sores on them. Charles raised money to build the man a new house and told him to keep it clean, according to The Christian Post.

He also told the man, “Voodoo is like the old house. It’s full of a bunch of spirits that are just like rats. You’ve seen the damage the rats do to your children. Voodoo does the same thing to our spirit. But God is a jealous God. He won’t allow any voodoo at all in your life,” The Christian Post reported.

The Christian Post noted that Haiti has had a succession of corrupt rulers and some 200 years of near chaos. It is one of the poorest countries in the world, rendered even poorer with the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Quoting DeWitt, The Christian Post noted that Haiti could still reshape itself into a new, prosperous country. DeWitt said, “If MTM can display the village of Gramothe as a model for other villages to follow, then all over Haiti villages can do what we are doing, and we can defeat generational poverty village by village.”

Pope Benedict XVI thanked recently the British people prior to his departure from the U.K., even as he said he hoped that his four-day visit would fortify excellent ties between the U.K. and the Holy See.

In his speech, Benedict fondly recalled the events of his visit, and thanked the people of the U.K. for being hospitable and welcoming throughout his stay, according to the Catholic News Agency.

Benedict also thanked “Her Majesty The Queen…and other political leaders,” and said he was honored to address Parliament. “I sincerely hope that these occasions will contribute to confirming and strengthening the excellent relations between the Holy See and the United Kingdom, especially in cooperation for international development, in care for the natural environment, and in the building of a civil society with a renewed sense of shared values and common purpose,” the Catholic News Agency reported.

Benedict also thanked the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the Bishops of the Church of England, citing their shared traditions and culture; and representatives of different faiths in the U.K., for having shared thoughts concerning how religions can help in “the development of a healthy pluralistic society,” according to the Catholic News Agency.

To the Catholics of Britain, Benedict said he treasured celebrating the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, whose teachings, he said, are relevant to Christian living and witness in today’s world, the Catholic News Agency said.

The sizeable turnout for Benedict was in large part because U.K. Catholics came to pay their respect for the pontiff and to their Catholic tradition, and to indicate respect for the part the papacy has played in sustaining Catholicism over the past 2,000 years—even as they may not always agree with the pope, The New York Times reported.

However, a large number of people of different faiths also came to witness an historical time, the first state visit by a pope since the time of King Henry VIII, and to hear a different message that questioned today’s focus on consumerism and celebrity, The Telegraph said.

Notably, few protestors came compared to the sizeable crowds drawn by the pope. The turnout for the “Nope to Pope” rally slated last Saturday in London was described as a “damp squib” versus the 50,000 in Hyde Park who joined in the papal prayer vigil, The Telegraph reported.

Benedict focused on rekindling dialogue, and demanded that religion be allowed public expression, including the public celebration of Christmas, a message that rang well in a country where 72 per cent polled described themselves as Christian, and 75 per cent in a 2008 poll said the economic crisis led them to become more spiritual, The Telegraph said.

The Telegraph said a victory from the pope’s visit was seen in forwarding the newly beatified John Henry Newman as an example for furthering discussions that call for crossing both reason and faith.

Notably, too, was the fact that of late, a group from the Church of England who disagree with the ordination of women clergy are being offered accelerated entry to Catholicism with a special exemption from rules of celibacy. Benedict’s visit is seen as likely to encourage more conversions to Catholicism from this group, The Telegraph reported.

After a most exhausting and draining thirty hours or so, Jesus Christ is led away to be crucified. We are in Luke Chapter 23 and at verse 26. The authorities force a dark skinned man from Tripoli to carry this heavy wooden beam. No Roman would carry the cross, and the Romans would not ask a Jew, not in this situation, in the middle of a Religious Festival. It was the Passover.

Simon of Cyrene carries the cross of Jesus, and this man received a mighty reward. It appears from Mark 15 and verse 21 that he and his wife and two sons became disciples of Jesus.

No man carries the cross of Jesus faithfully without receiving a work of God in his own life, and on occasions, through his life into the lives of his family.

Remember what your Cross is. You can lift it up or put it down. It is not sickness or anything of that nature.

Luke 23:27. The news had travelled fast of what was happening in Jerusalem and a sympathetic crowd had gathered, and they are not afraid to express their emotions.

They are not afraid to allow their deep feelings for Jesus to flow out towards Jesus. And yet, Jesus says, Do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children.

Jesus knew what was going to happen to him, but they did not know what was going to happen to them, just as many today have no idea what Jesus is doing, and what is about to happen to those who live as if there were no God.

Jesus, as he climbs Calvary, begins to refer to the coming day of judgement, because as the Judgement of God is revealed, unconverted unrepentant sinners will cry out to the mountains and rocks to fall upon them.

These, understandably, are serious and solemn words. There are not many new songs and choruses based on these words from Jesus Christ! I wonder why?

It has been found that people believe what they sing and find it easier to believe what is sung rather than what is preached and taught.

We have to be very careful as to what words we give people to sing when they come together for praise and worship. Some of the songs today are no more than vain repetition. And, there is a difference between singing and praise and worship and we need to inform and teach our people that too. This is an area out with these current studies but it is a crucial matter which demands our serious consideration.

When I hear people say, “O, the worship was wonderful today”, I usually make the comment, “I wonder what God thought about it”. That is what counts. Not the feelings in the hearts of men, important though these are, but was the singing and praise pleasing to God the Father?

After a most exhausting and draining thirty hours or so, Jesus Christ is led away to be crucified. We are in Luke Chapter 23 and at verse 26. The authorities force a dark skinned man from Tripoli to carry this heavy wooden beam. No Roman would carry the cross, and the Romans would not ask a Jew, not in this situation, in the middle of a Religious Festival. It was the Passover.

Simon of Cyrene carries the cross of Jesus, and this man received a mighty reward. It appears from Mark 15 and verse 21 that he and his wife and two sons became disciples of Jesus.

No man carries the cross of Jesus faithfully without receiving a work of God in his own life, and on occasions, through his life into the lives of his family.

Remember what your Cross is. You can lift it up or put it down. It is not sickness or anything of that nature.

Luke 23:27. The news had travelled fast of what was happening in Jerusalem and a sympathetic crowd had gathered, and they are not afraid to express their emotions.

They are not afraid to allow their deep feelings for Jesus to flow out towards Jesus. And yet, Jesus says, Do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children.

Jesus knew what was going to happen to him, but they did not know what was going to happen to them, just as many today have no idea what Jesus is doing, and what is about to happen to those who live as if there were no God.

Jesus, as he climbs Calvary, begins to refer to the coming day of judgement, because as the Judgement of God is revealed, unconverted unrepentant sinners will cry out to the mountains and rocks to fall upon them.

These, understandably, are serious and solemn words. There are not many new songs and choruses based on these words from Jesus Christ! I wonder why?

It has been found that people believe what they sing and find it easier to believe what is sung rather than what is preached and taught.

We have to be very careful as to what words we give people to sing when they come together for praise and worship. Some of the songs today are no more than vain repetition. And, there is a difference between singing and praise and worship and we need to inform and teach our people that too. This is an area out with these current studies but it is a crucial matter which demands our serious consideration.

When I hear people say, “O, the worship was wonderful today”, I usually make the comment, “I wonder what God thought about it”. That is what counts. Not the feelings in the hearts of men, important though these are, but was the singing and praise pleasing to God the Father?

Author bio:
Alexander “Sandy” Shaw is pastor of Nairn Christian Fellowship in Nairn, Scotland. Nairn is 17 miles east of Inverness – on the Moray Firth Coast – not far from the Loch Ness Monster! Gifted as a Biblical teacher, Sandy is firmly committed to making sure that his teachings are firmly grounded in the Word. Sandy has a weekly radio talk which can be heard via the Internet on Saturday at 11:40 a.m., New Orleans time, at wsho.com.

The birth control pill has turned 50.

However, today birth control has evolved into many new forms of hormonal contraception.

At the same time, new forms of natural birth control have emerged, too.  Women have more options, and yet on the birth control pill’s 50^th anniversary, new information has emerged widening the debate on the safety of the pill, enlarging the potential side effects, and leading millennial Christians to rethink their positions on birth control.

New natural birth control methods

The website Christian Contraception has listed new natural methods of birth control, aside from abstention and the calendar-rhythm method.  These include the more accurate symptothermal method using a basal thermometer and watching for body signs that indicate ovulation.  Couples require training from a certified natural family planning instructor to use this method effectively.

Another method is the standard days method, which uses CycleBeads and works best for women with regular menstrual cycles.  A third innovation, the fertility computer, is a handheld device that tells a woman which days she is fertile.  Some devices test a woman’s urine, others test her basal temperature.  All these natural methods are approved by the Roman Catholic church.

New hormonal contraception

The birth control pill uses synthetic hormones to inhibit the release of an egg to prevent fertilization.  It can also prevent implantation.  Hormonal contraception comes in new forms aside from oral contraceptives, including the vaginal ring, contraceptive patch, the mini pill, injectables and some intrauterine devices.  Christian Contraceptives says all these methods may pose a risk to preborn life in the earliest stages of development, and they advise against its use.

Changed Perceptions

Here are some changed perceptions that have emerged in the last 50 years since the birth control pill was introduced.

• Initially, Protestants, Catholics, Western and Eastern Orthodox faiths were against the pill.  Today, the Catholics still endorse only natural birth control methods.
• Sex was once considered immoral even among married couples if it was done outside of the purpose of procreation.
• Women’s primary role was that of wife and mother.
• Protestants began to endorse the Pill in the middle of the 20^th century.

New reasons for old beliefs

Christian women today are also finding new reasons for old beliefs.  For example Amy Julia Becker, in Christianity Today, wrote of how she had used the pill for a decade so she could enjoy life more with her husband.  Today she still has no regrets about taking the pill, but says that her reason is more for stewardship than for the pleasure of being a young bride.  By being able to plan her family she has experienced greater economic stability, improved health, and had greater access to education and career choices.  “Choosing to limit family size can be a way to demonstrate care and stewardship of God’s creation more generally,” Becker said.

Dr. Walter L. Larimore, MD on the other hand experienced a change in attitude towards hormonal contraception after having used it himself and having prescribed it since 1978.

The change of heart came after he encountered studies indicating the pill could have a post fertilization effect, causing the unrecognized loss of preborn children.  Larimore did his own research, consulted ethicists and pastors, debated and prayed.  In 1998 he stopped prescribing the pill.  In the Christian Contraception website he wrote, “As a family physician, my career has been committed to family care from conception to death. Since the evidence indicated to me that the pill could have a post fertilization effect, I felt I could no longer, in good conscience, prescribe it–especially since viable alternatives are available.”

Continued debate

Fifty years after the birth control pill, the debate has enlarged to include new considerations—including the larger role that women play in society today, and external issues families face, including economics and overpopulation.  Individual choice in the end must primarily be guided by prayer, counsel and biblical reference.