Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

Hark! The herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With th’angelic host proclaim,
“Christ is born in Bethlehem!”


Refrain

Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Christ, by highest Heav’n adored;
Christ the everlasting Lord;
Late in time, behold Him come,
Offspring of a virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th’incarnate Deity,
Pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.

Refrain

Hail the heav’nly Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings,
Ris’n with healing in His wings.
Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.

Refrain

Come, Desire of nations, come,
Fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring Seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Now display Thy saving power,
Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to Thine.

CT's Top 10 Stories of 2007

The events, people, and debates of the past year that Christianity Today's editors believe have shaped, or will significantly shape, evangelical life, thought, or mission.

Baseball's Partial Accounting

The steroid investigation is a good first step only.
By Mark Galli

Soul Searching after Mass Murder

Another reason we eagerly look for "the one who is to come."
By Mark Galli

Sean Taylor's Spiritual Journey

After Washington Redskins football player Sean Taylor was murdered in his Miami home on December 3, there were whispers that his rough lifestyle was to blame. In an article for the Adventist Review, Mark Kellner, news editor, says au contraire:

At the time of his murder, Sean Taylor was running, but with God’s crowd at the Perrine Seventh-day Adventist Church in Miami. Peay believes he was making a run towards heaven — and away from his former ways.

During a late night conversation last October with Peay at an International House of Pancakes restaurant in College Park, Maryland, Taylor reaffirmed a decision he’d made earlier in 2007 to return to the Adventist Church and to the Lord.

According to Peay, Taylor said, “Pastor, I love going home to see my daughter. I’m not with all that other stuff anymore.”

Hate Crimes Bill Dropped

Some religious conservatives had complained it threatened religious liberty and equality.
By Sarah Pulliam

Safe at Home

British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons, 54, is back home in Liverpool. She had been convicted in Sudan of "insulting Islam" before receiving a pardon and being expelled from the country. Now Gibbons is hoping to rest before starting a job search. A public relations person hired by her family tried to shoo away inquisitive reporters.

Some at the home were happy to talk to reporters – British Muslims delivering a message of support and a bouquet bearing the message: "Welcome back, Gillian."

"It was outrageous, she shouldn't have been treated that way," said Dr. Abdul Hamid. "She's been the victim of something ridiculous. We're glad she's back home and her ordeal is all over."

While her supporters scoffed at the allegations, the woman herself, although out of Sudan, treaded carefully when asked at Heathrow about her offence. "I don't think I really know enough about it to comment really," she said. "It's a very difficult area and a very delicate area."

She added, "I was very upset to think that I might have caused offence to people."

The AP report notes, "Children and staff at Liverpool's Garston Church of England Primary School, where she taught for 12 years until 2000, had been praying for her safe return."

There was no word about whether the teddy bear made it out of Sudan safely.

The Brown Sessions

Steve Brown and Tony Campolo talk about Red Letter Christians (and Stan)

The Teddy Bear Affair

The Teddy Bear Affair—during which a British schoolteacher was expelled from Sudan for “insulting Islam” because she allowed her students to name the class teddy bear “Muhammad” (honest, folks, I'm not making this stuff up)—has drawn lots of critical comment on the Web. But Joe Loconte says the episode reveals a disturbing pattern of appeasement of Islamist totalitarians:

The reaction of political and religious leaders abroad was less than Churchillian. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, after several days of silence, expressed his "serious concerns"--and was quick to emphasize that his government "fully respected" Islam. The archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, called the actions of the Sudanese government "an absurdly disproportionate response." Muhammad Abdul Bari, of the Muslim Council of Britain, considered it "unfortunate" that Sudanese officials "were found wanting" in common sense. The U.S.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations blandly lamented "an inappropriate use of Sudan's legal system."

Well-intentioned responses like these don't make them any less insensible or misleading. Reassurances about respect for Islam fail to see the violent irrationality of the mob in Khartoum for what it was: an expression of barbarism, shamelessly cloaked in religious garb. Complaints about a "disproportionate response" by the Sudanese government fatuously imply that some sort of punishment was justified. Moreover, it is not "unfortunate" that Sudan's political and religious establishment stoked the embers of sectarian blood-lust: It is a ghoulish throwback to the Inquisition.

Perhaps most significantly, calling it an "inappropriate" application of Sudan's religious law to threaten a school teacher with torture and execution misses the point. It is, rather, the predictable result of an Islamist theocracy and the culture of hatred, paranoia, and violence it generates. Under Article 125 of the Sudanese constitution, Ms. Gibbons was convicted of "insulting Islam" and "inciting hatred"--catch-all provisions that assuredly create exactly what they pretend to prohibit. (It was, in fact, an aggrieved Muslim ex-employee of the school who complained to education officials.) It's no surprise that this radical shari'a mindset provoked a civil war in Sudan that killed millions. Nor should it shock anyone that al-Bashir's teddy bear brigades are fueling the ethnic cleansing and butchery in Darfur. This is the social mayhem that Islamist regimes threaten to produce wherever they exist--in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and beyond.

Loconte says it’s time for all good people to take a stand. The cost of continuing to cringe is higher than we think.

The disease of jihadi Islam is becoming harder to ignore with each passing outbreak. Two years ago the publication of Danish cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad sparked global protests, riots, and lethal violence. A speech last year by Pope Benedict critical of Islamic militancy led to more protests and dozens of deaths. When a London policy group published a study into hate speech being peddled by British mosques, the Muslim Council of Britain instigated a backlash of vitriol and charges of Islamophobia.

"For almost two decades we've allowed the message of political Islam to breed unchallenged within the British Muslim community, preaching separation and confrontation," writes Shiraz Maher, a former member of the militant group Hizb ut-Tahrir, in the Sunday Times. "Our indifference has allowed Islamism to become the dominant political discourse among young British Muslims.”

It should be no surprise that Islam today is politicized; there is no “separation of mosque and state” concept in Muslim theology. In Islam, politics, territorial conquest, and religion are intertwined. Of course, Christian states too have misused their religion in the past, but eventually we realized that politicizing the gospel is no way to honor the Prince of Peace, who stated categorically that his “kingdom is not of this world.” Does Islam have the potential to do the same?

Muslim apologists are quick to assert that Islam is a “religion of peace.” I’d be much more inclined to take them at their word if Muslims were more peaceful.

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