'We Could Not Reach Out to Him,' Says Campus Crusade Leader

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1. Faith of Cho Seung-Hui uncertain, but not that of many of his victims Two days after the deadly shootings at Virginia Tech, many questions remain unanswered. Among them are questions about Cho’s personal religious beliefs and his attitude toward Christians. The few details that have emerged in the press so far seem to raise more questions than they answer. The Associated Press reports, for example:

Cho … left a note that was found after the bloodbath. A law enforcement official described it Tuesday as a typed, eight-page rant against rich kids and religion. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “You caused me to do this,” the official quoted the note as saying. Cho indicated in his letter that the end was near and that there was a deed to be done, the official said. He also expressed disappointment in his own religion, and made several references to Christianity, the official said.

Unanswered: What was “his own religion”? USA Today says that at least one point, he (like many South Koreans) was a Presbyterian: “Pastor Cha Young Ho of the Korean Presbyterian Church said that the family once belonged to his church and that Cho was a quiet boy.”

McClatchy reporters talked with Young-Hwan Kim, president of the school’s Korean Campus Crusade for Christ chapter. “No one knew him,” Kim said. “We had no contact throughout four years. It’s amazing. We could not reach out to him.” It wasn’t for lack of trying, Kim said. Members of Korean Campus Crusade repeatedly invited him to meetings, he said, but Cho wouldn’t even provide personal contact information.

Another “reference to Christianity” comes from AOL blogger Ian MacFarlane’s posting of Cho’s now infamous plays. As The Washington Post summarizes, “The two plays are filled with diatribes against Catholic priests and Michael Jackson, along with references to government conspiracies to kill Marilyn Monroe and John Lennon.”

If Cho’s faith remains something of a mystery, Christianity is front and center in much of the memorial. Stories of the victims are trickling out. The Myspace page of Lauren McCain, 20, now continues her testimony. “The purpose and love of my life is Jesus Christ,” she wrote. “I don’t have to argue religion, philosophy, or historical evidence because I KNOW Him. He is just as real, if not more so, as my ‘earthly’ father.”

McCain is becoming one of the more prominent Christian victims, but she’s not alone. “Several of our students were killed,” Campus Crusade leader Tony Arnold told Mission Network News. “Three that we know were involved with either Campus Crusade for Christ or with one of our sister affiliate ministries called Valor. There’s also another student that is not officially listed yet, but since no one has been able to reach her, we believe she must be among the casualties.”

Yesterday’s public convocation also offered several notes of faith. WorldNetDaily complained that “speakers … called on Allah and Buddha in their efforts to minister to the survivors, family and friends of victims of the shooting massacre at the school — but Jesus wasn’t mentioned by name.”

Apparently quoting Jesus doesn’t count: The thousands of attendees recited The Lord’s Prayer. Both the speeches of President George W. Bush and Gov. Tim Kaine have also been noted for their religious references.

Kaine invoked Job and Jesus. Job, he said, “was angry at his Creator. He argued with God. He didn’t lose his faith, but it’s okay to argue. It’s okay to be angry.” It’s also okay to feel despair, he said, pointing to “those haunting words that were uttered on a hill, on Calvary, “My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?'” But do not let go of community, Kaine urged both those directly lost family members and those able to help the grieving.

Bush sounded a similar note. “Across the town of Blacksburg and in towns all across America, houses of worship from every faith have opened their doors and have lifted you up in prayer,” he said. “People who have never met you are praying for you; they’re praying for your friends who have fallen and who are injured. There’s a power in these prayers, real power. In times like this, we can find comfort in the grace and guidance of a loving God. As the Scriptures tell us, ‘Don’t be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.'”

These are just a few of the faith tidbits appearing in the media so far. Christianity Today has a reporter in Blacksburg and will be looking for other news about campus ministry, the church, and what God is doing at Virginia Tech.

2. Supreme Court supports ban on partial-birth abortion The government has a “legitimate, substantial interest in preserving and promoting fetal life,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote today for the five-justice majority upholding the federal government’s 2003 ban on partial-birth abortion. “The government may use its voice and its regulatory authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman.”

But this won’t save lives, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg responded in her dissent: “The law saves not a single fetus from destruction, for it targets only a method of performing abortion.” (Strange bedfellows: The American Life League made the same claim in its 2003 “no compromise” dismissal of the ban.) The ban and the court’s decision, Ginsburg said, “cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court — and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women’s lives.”

And yet, Roe and the Supreme Court’s later rulings on abortion have always allowed limitations on that right in theory. In this case, Kennedy wrote, the ban’s opponents “have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases.” Nor is it “void for vagueness, or that it imposes an undue burden on a woman’s right to abortion based on its overbreadth or lack of a health exception.”

We’ll have an original reaction story on the decision shortly. In the meantime, be sure to read our editorial (most of which was originally written to address South Dakota’s abortion ban). National Review‘s editorial is remarkable as well: “Four justices on the Supreme Court have accepted all the premises for a constitutional right to infanticide. They lack only the nerve to take their reasoning to its logical conclusion.”

3. Christian publishing house attacked in Turkey; three workers’ throats slit From the Associated Press: “Assailants tied up three people at a publishing house that distributes Bibles in Turkey and then slit their throats Wednesday, adding to a string of attacks apparently targeting the country’s tiny Christian minority.” The BBC adds, citing unnamed local media: “Nationalists had protested at the publishing house in the past, accusing it of involvement in missionary activities.” A German national was among the victims.

4. Zimbabwe deregisters all aid groups to fight “agents of imperialism” Not much good news out of Zimbabwe. One exception: A prayer rally to pray for democracy occurred without violence. But that happened only after police forbade opposition figures from addressing the congregation. At another recent rally, lead opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was severely beaten by police and hospitalized. Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe praised the police for “bashing” those who attended the “illegal” prayer rally.

Now comes particularly bad news. The government has deregistered the more than 1,000 nongovernmental organizations in the country. Those who want to stay will have to reapply for new permits.

“Pro-opposition and Western organizations masquerading as relief agencies continue to mushroom, and the Government has annulled the registration of all NGOs in order to screen out agents of imperialism from organizations working to uplift the wellbeing of the poor,” Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu told The Times of London.

Among the reasons, sources tell the Times: The government wants to control all food distribution so that it can reward political supporters and punish political opponents.

5. A curious Easter sermon Holy Week is two weeks gone, but an article that ran on Holy Wednesday is still bothering me. The title of Diana Butler Bass’s post on the Sojourners God’s Politics blog is promising: “Believing the Resurrection.” But the article is anything but. She writes:

One year, as Easter approached, I overheard an exchange between [Episcopal bishop Daniel Corrigan, an] octogenarian liberal lion, and a fellow parishioner. “Bishop Corrigan,” the person asked, “Do you believe in the resurrection?” Frankly, I could not wait to hear the answer — like most of his generation, there was no way that Bishop Corrigan believed in a literal resurrection. He looked at the questioner and said firmly, without pause, “Yes. I believe in the resurrection. I’ve seen it too many times not to.” …

Bishop Corrigan’s comment — a comment upon which I have mediated for some dozen years — points to a different way of embracing, of believing, the resurrection. His answer both defies the conventional approach to the resurrection (as a scientifically verifiable event), and maintains the truthfulness (the credibility) of the resurrection as historically viable and real. The resurrection is not an intellectual puzzle. Rather, it is a living theological reality, a distant event with continuing spiritual, human, and social consequences. The evidence for the resurrection is all around us. Not in some ancient text, Jesus bones, or a DNA sample. Rather, the historical evidence for the resurrection is Jesus living in us; it is the transformative power of the Holy Spirit, bringing back to life that which was dead. We are the evidence.

There is a woman in my church in Washington, D.C., who was homeless for 15 years. Several years ago, she came to Epiphany Church and was welcomed by the congregation’s ministry to homeless people. … Eventually, she moved off the street into Section 8 housing, secured both work and support, and pulled her life together. An active member of Epiphany, she helps run the homeless ministry, serves as a Sunday reader, and usher. When I see her on Sunday, she is a living, breathing, historical witness that the resurrection is true.

There is a truly orthodox sense in which Christ’s resurrection is manifested in the transformation of our lives today. But Jesus’ resurrection is not just “living theological reality.” It is a living reality with no modifying adjective. The “transformative power of the Holy Spirit” is the gift of Pentecost, not of Easter. And without Easter—without a real empty tomb—there is no Pentecost. To say “I’ve seen the resurrection many times” is to deny the central truth of the Resurrection. Jesus’ Resurrection was unique and cataclysmic. It was not a resuscitation, nor a life “pulled together.” It was the turning point of history. We may see its effects, but we won’t see anything truly like it until Jesus comes again.

Several of Bass’s readers were troubled by her comment. Says Mark P : “It seems to me, though, that you’re being intellectually dishonest if you can’t answer that parishioner’s question in one of three ways: Yes, no, or I don’t know. … [W]hen you hem and haw about metaphor and ‘resurrections’ of homeless people, the subtext of your answer is, ‘No, I don’t believe the story, but I’m afraid to admit it.'”

“I am sorry to see that I will have to leave Sojourners to find a Christian call to activism,” writes Tim. “I’ll stick with what Paul wrote.” JK similarly writes, “I am a strong supporter of many of the issues Sojourners addresses. … However, I cannot support an organization that allows blogger opinions that deny the very basics of the Christian faith.”

It should be mentioned that the Easter blog posts of Sojourners head Jim Wallis—a three–part excerpt from his book The Call to Conversion—strongly support both the centrality and the reality of the Resurrection (especially the third part). But one wonders what he and Sojourners thought about Bass’s column—and why they decided to lend the Sojourners name to it. One expects Wallis—whose career has been devoted to separating liberal politics from liberal theology—to hear that question more than once in the coming months.

In the meantime, Wallis may want to give Bass a copy of N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God. Or at least 1 Corinthians.

Music:

Music Review: Rev. Timothy Wright | Wright’s new “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” album (Koch Records) offers more of his effortlessly timeless sound (Associated Press)
SXSW fest erases indie/pop divide | In pop music, notions of “high” and “low” don’t hold up under close scrutiny (Associated Press)
Gospel label eyes country success for new trio | Austins Bridge brings to the table a new sound that is prompting Daywind Records to explore options in the country and adult contemporary formats (Reuters)
Higher-powered music: Contemporary gospel finds a home in D.C. | Last week — in a move curiously made possible by the demise of the nation’s oldest commercial classical radio station — the country’s largest black-owned broadcasting company finally put Praise 104.1 on the air in Washington, on Easter Sunday (The Washington Post)
Unsettling history of that joyous ‘hallelujah’ | A holiday favorite was originally meant to celebrate the destruction of Jerusalem (Michael Marissen, The New York Times)
Assault on Christendom | Wow. We didn’t know. The “Hallelujah Chorus” is a paean celebrating Titus’ sack of Jerusalem and the Christian’s God’s bloody vengeance upon the Jews. That was The New York Times’ Easter Sunday gift to its readers, courtesy of Swarthmore professor Michael Marissen (Michael Linton, First Things)
Alternative Christian rockers avoid the ruts | The Violet Burning has made a career of dodging musical trends (The Grand Rapids Press, Mi.)
Charity, church, and puppies | Claira’s Daze are cuter than you’ll ever be (OC Weekly, Ca.)
EMI Christian creates new post to oversee technology/marketing | Brentwood-based EMI Christian Music Group has promoted David Crace to the newly created position of senior vice president and chief marketing officer (Nashville Business Journal)

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