New Revision of Religion Bill Voted in Bulgaria

The new Religion Bill (aka Denominations Acts) was voted in on the last working day of 2018 by the Bulgarian Parliament. At the beginning of the parliamentarian season, on January 31, 2019 Parliament considered several new corrections to the just voted-in bill as follows. Those new corrections were all voted in on Friday and allowed for:

• Between $15-40 million in stipends for the Eastern Orthodox in the form of salaries
• Some $400,000 will be provided to the Muslim confession
• Additional $5 million were allocated for the so called “Religion” Directorate – a government agency that will oversee all religious activities, sermons, visitors, finances and otherwise religious business in the country

Additionally, a one time tax amnesty would be given to various confessions at $ 5.2 million, as $ 5.1 million of this amount goes to the Muslim confession. Some sources cite that with interest of years past, the Muslim confession actually owes the state over $10 million and European Union organisations have been summoned to intervene to this “tax amnesty” as being illegal to the current code.

One reason for this is some $20 million in annual income the Muslim confession collects annual from renting properties, which should be sufficient to pay their tax. Just for comparison, at one time our building in Sofia owed $90,000 in waste tax, but was quickly summoned to pay it. But this is not the scary part just yet!

This rather large government stipend of roughly $50 million annually is designated in the government budget as “Orthodox and Muslim confession” (singular). Such in Bulgaria does not exist, except if administrative merge of those religions is meant by the government with the current legislation. There has been lot of talk that the great tax exemption toward the Muslim confession has been done in order to secure ethnic peace on the Balkans and to some extent, Muslim religious leader are confirming this in recent days. Additionally, after meeting with the Eastern Orthodox patriarch and the Muslim chief mufti this week, the Bulgarian Prime Minister stated that:

“The Bulgarian state should pay for its Bulgarian churches/confessions … in order to prevent foreign intelligence from dividing our nation.”

Such rhetoric seems to have been taken directly from the historical archives and brings the painful memory of the 1949 Pastoral Process when 15 Protestant pastors were sentences by the Communist Regime as “spies of foreign intelligence centers.” Perhaps for this reason, Bulgaria was promptly noted as one of the most intolerant countries in the Europe Union in a study by the University of Nevada, which collected survey data covering a total of 450,000 people in 100 countries.

 

Presenting the CLEAR Approach to Bible Translation

NEW LAW on RELIGION in FRANCE

France adheres to a strict form of secularism, known as laïcité, which is designed to keep religion out of public life. This principle was entrenched by law in 1905, after fierce anti-clerical struggles with the Roman Catholic church.

For the first quarter of 2019, the government will focus on three reforms: unemployment benefits, reforming the state and the revision of the 1905 law separating religion and government affairs. The reform of France’s unemployment benefits which is central to Macron’s social program, was officially launched in November but there is still a lot of work to be done.

The changes that Macron wants to bring in include a “safety net” for the self-employed, meaning that entrepreneurs, craftsmen, traders or farmers who find themselves in the unfortunate situation of having their business liquidated will, for the first time, receive compensation from the State. Other changes include the right to unemployment benefits for workers who resign and incentives for companies to limit unstable contracts. Meanwhile, the state reform, which was originally delayed in July 2018, is also a big item on the agenda for the French government in early 2019.

SPS meets in Washington

2019 WILLIAM SEYMOUR COLLEGE

The abandoned children of Eastern Europe

BibleTech 2019 or BUST: A Decade Later

Explore the intersection of Bible and technology at this year’s BibleTechconference, coming to Seattle on April 11–12, 2019.

Learn about advances in biblical studies from over 25 leaders in the tech, Bible translation, and publishing industries. Plan on discovering new ways technological advances equip us to explore and share God’s Word.

Presentations at the conference include:

• Alexa, What Does the Bible Say . . . ? by Peter Venable — What does Cortana have to do with Eden? If you’ve ever wanted to ask Siri for recent scholarship about the hypostatic union—or if you’re not sure why you’d want to do that—this is the presentation for you. In this talk, Peter Venable will talk about using conversational interfaces like these in Bible study or research. Venable asks of these tools: Is it a gimmick or a necessity?
• The CLEAR Approach to Bible Translation by Andi Wu and Randall Tan — Statistics show 1 billion people don’t have a complete Bible in their everyday language. That’s over 2,000 languages that need a Bible translation—one that doesn’t sacrifice quality. Andi Wu and Randall Tan of the Global Bible Initiative will present an innovative drafting tool for Bible translation, making it possible to create new Bible translations quickly and accurately.
• Visualizing Textual Critical Data for English-Speaking Laypersons by Mark Ward — What if the best way to understand textual critical data is not by focusing on differences in the Greek New Testament texts? What can we learn by looking at the texts’ similarities instead? In this presentation, Mark Ward reveals his new project—a unique visualization of Greek New Testament textual critical data.

See the complete list of topics and speakers at Faithlife.com/bible-tech.

Join us on April 11–12 in Seattle, WA, for BibleTech! Register now.

REVELATION RELOADED 2019

Sunday: 20 Signs of the Last Days

Monday: Spiritual Solutions from the 7 Churches

Tuesday: Rapture of the Church

Wednesday: A Place Called Heaven

Although the Book of Revelation has been vastly studied and interpreted throughout church history, usually the focus is on one major issue within the text, namely, the role and future of the church. The main reason for this has been the in-depth prophetic and pastoral messages to the Seven Churches. The value of the messages to the Seven Churches of Revelation is constituted by the fact that they are the last recorded Biblical messages to the Christian Church. For this reason, the letters to the Seven Churches obviously do not contain all of the usual elements used in the New Testament epistolary form.

Network of the Seven Churches of Revelation (PDF)

Read also: Revelation Revealed

• 20 SIGNS of the LAST DAYS (Revised: January, 2019)
• Spiritual Problems and Solutions from the 7 Churches of Revelation
• Rapture of the Church (A Reformed Theological Perspective)
• The Great Tribulation
• Daniel and Revelation

Orthodox and Wesleyan Spirituality Praxis

Dony K. Donev, D. Min.

“I sit down alone: only God is here; in His presence
I open and read this book to find the way to heaven”
– John Wesley

Our search for the theological and practical connection between Pentecostalism and Eastern Orthodoxy continues with yet another publication by St. Vladimir’s Press titled, Orthodox and Wesleyan Scriptural Understanding and Practice. The book represents an ongoing dialogue between the Orthodox and Wesleyan confessions and it emphasizes how theologians from both sides are attempting to discover commonalities in theology and praxis. To come together, not so much as theologians and thinkers, but as practical doers motivated by the proper interpretation of Scripture. As observed from the title, as well as through the text, these similarities are not necessarily in theological convictions, but in the proceeding Biblical approach toward interpretation of Scripture.

Orthodox and Wesleyan Scriptural Understanding and Practice is a compilation of essays from the Second Consultation on Orthodox and Wesleyan Spirituality under the editorship in 2000 of S.T. Kimbrough, Jr., who contributed the chapter on Chares Wesley’s’ Lyrical Commentary on the Holy Scriptures. I must issue the caution that the book is not an easy read, at least not for the reader who intends to understand it. But it is by no means a book to be easily passed by Pentecostal scholars searching for the Biblical roots of Pentecostalism within the Eastern Orthodoxy.

The book begins with an interesting observation of the exegesis of the Cappadocian Fathers by John A. McGuckin, and continues with an article on the spiritual cognition of my personal favorite, Simeon the New Theologian by Theodore Stylianopoulos. Although the discussion on Gregory the Theologian, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa was thoughtful and presented in an interesting manner, the essay on St. Simeon struck me as well structured, but a bit shallow.

An interesting approach was taken in Tamara Grdzelidze’s essay where she presented an orthodox perspective of the Wesleyan position on authority of scriptural interpretation. The essay had a very strong exposition in regard to the Wesleyan understanding of the importance of Scripture in Christian living. However, the latter part, which dealt with the influence of tradition, was not investigated to its full capacity, which left the text (perhaps on purpose) open to multiple interpretations. Nevertheless, this issue was resolved later in the book by Ted Campbell that dealt with the subject from the Wesleyan perspective.

A central theme throughout the book was the comparison of prayers and song lyrics from both camps. Although I am no musical expert, I must agree with the authors, that theology within music has played an important role in both Orthodox and Wesleyan traditions, as it continues to do so in the everyday spiritual experience of the Pentecostal believer. This rather practical approach seemed to be the heart of the discussion where both sides could agree.Finally, the role of the Holy Spirit is viewed as central for the reading, understanding and practicing of Scripture in both the Orthodox and Wesleyan traditions. For the Pentecostal reader, it may be easy to accept this presumption as similar to the Pentecostal experience, yet the book describes it in terms which will be somewhat foreign to many Pentecostals. Although the said similarities between the interpretations of Scripture may be self explanatory for the western Pentecostal reader, they may be easily disregarded as unimportant by people who practice theology and ministry in an Eastern European context due to the ever-present tension between the Orthodox and Protestant denominations. But even if the Pentecostal scholar gathers nothing else from this book, he/she must remember this one thing: The time has come for a formal Orthodox-Pentecostal dialogue, like the one which the World Council of Churches has been trying to put together since 1991.

New Bulgarian Bill on Religion Brought Back to Parliament for Corrections

The new bill on religion was voted in Bulgaria on the last working day of 2018. As we celebrated the holidays thinking the drama was over, yet a new bill was being drafted. At the beginning of the parliamentarian season, on January 31, 2019 several new corrections were introduced to the just voted-in bill as follows:

1. $10,000,000 in stipends to be given to the Eastern Orthodox in the form of salaries
2. A similar type subsidy in the amount of $400,000 will be provided to the Muslim confession
3. A one time tax amnesty would be given to various confessions for prior debt toward the Bulgarian state. In the case of the Muslim confession, this one time amnesty has been calculated at $8,000,000. The amnesty amount for the Eastern Orthodox Church is yet to be calculated due to the thousands of churches and monasteries they occupy across the country.

These are just a few of the changes being proposed currently. More will follow as the bill goes for discussion on the Parliament floor. But one thing jumps out from the text that is worth mentioning. The large government “stipend” is designated to the “Orthodox and Muslim confession” (singular). Such in Bulgaria does not exist. Yet!

If the authors wanted to indicate two separate religions, just like in the English language more so by Bulgarian grammar rules, they should have used the plural confession(s). The phrase is repeated several times in the document eliminating the possibility of a grammatical error or a simple typo. If the new bill purpose to merge Orthodoxy and Islam under the same state budget will become clear soon.

Europe 2020 indicators – poverty and social exclusion among Pentecostals

8 Poorest Countries In Europe:

1. Kosovo –
2. Albania – …
3. Bosnia and Herzegovina – …
4. Republic of Macedonia – …
5. Serbia – …
6. Belarus – …
7. Montenegro…
8. Bulgaria

12 Facts About Poverty in Europe

1. 1. One in four Europeans experiences at least one form of poverty. Forms of poverty include income poverty, severe material deprivation, very low work intensity and social exclusion. Income poverty is the most common form of poverty in Europe, affecting 17.3 percent of people. One hundred eighteen million people (23.5 percent) of the EU-28 population were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, with 43 million of those not able to afford a quality meal every second day. This is known as severe material deprivation.
   2. Social exclusion is the lack of social resources and rights available to most people as a result of poverty or being part of a minority group. In 2015, more than a third of the population was at risk of poverty or social exclusion in three EU countries:

41.3% in Bulgaria,

37% in Romania and

35.7% in Greece.

The countries with the lowest risk were the Czech Republic at 14% and Sweden at 16%.

1. The poverty line is the minimum level of income needed to secure the necessities of life and differs greatly for each European country. An average of 9.8 percent of people in the EU live below the poverty line. The country with the lowest amount of people living below the poverty line is Austria at four percent, and the highest is Greece at 36 percent. This is one of the 12 facts about poverty in Europe that reveals the enormous gap between wealthier and poorer countries in Europe.
2. The unemployment rate in Europe is only around seven percent. According to Eurostat, some countries rank above this average with Greece at 20.9 percent and Spain at 16.3 percent. In 2016, 48.7 percent of people who were unemployed were at risk of poverty. Unemployment also makes people more at risk of severe material deprivation.
3. Poverty in Europe is not limited to those who are unemployed. In 2015, 7.7 percent of the EU population was at risk of poverty despite working full-time, with men more at risk than women. Romania has Europe’s highest risk of in-work poverty with a rate of 18.9 percent. Spain and Greece follow with 13.1 percent and 14.1 percent, respectively. Additionally, the in-work poverty risk has increased from 8.3 percent in 2010 to 9.6 percent in 2016.
4. Women have a higher risk of poverty in Europe. The number of women suffering from poverty or social exclusion in the EU was 1.9 percent higher than men in 2015. Additionally, young people between the ages of 18 and 24 are more at risk of poverty or social inclusion with a risk of 30.6 percent.
5. In 2015, almost 50 percent of all single parents in Europe were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, which is twice as much as the risk for any other household.
6. Foreigner-born residents (39.2 percent) are at a higher risk of poverty or social exclusion than native citizens (21.6 percent). In Italy, the number of foreigners at risk is particularly high at 55 percent.
7. Children below the age of 18 also have a high rate of poverty or social exclusion, at 47 percent, with 26 million children in the EU living at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Child poverty in the U.K. has reached its highest level since 2010, reaching 30 percent.
8. Even with the economy improving, one in three people in Spain still lives in poverty, which is defined as living on €8,000 or less per year. Children are also at a higher risk of poverty in Spain. In Andalusia, a Spanish province, child poverty reached 44 percent.
9. Italy has the most people at risk of poverty in Europe. This amount rose from 15 million to 18 million people since the 2008 crisis, with over 4 million people living in absolute poverty.
10. The heads of government in the EU adopted the Europe 2020 Strategy in 2010 to address poverty. The goal of this was to lift at least 20 million people out of the risk of poverty and social exclusion by 2020.  Unfortunately, this goal has not been reached and the situation has gotten worse instead of better. There has been an increase in poverty in the EU over the past years. In 2009, there were 117 million people and 27 EU member states at risk of poverty or social inclusion in the EU Since then, there has been an increase of 1.6 million people and one country.

Although these 12 facts about poverty in Europe may introduce a growing problem, the EU along with the European governments are taking active steps to fight this problem. Several countries’ economies are now expanding and showing improvement since the crisis. This includes Spain’s economy, which now has a predicted growth of 2.5 percent in 2018. It is imperative to continue to provide foreign aid and assistance in order to ensure that U.S. allies continue to grow and move past the repercussions suffered after the crisis.

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