From Terry Mattingly at GetReligion, this troubling story: Rev. Yousef Nadarkhani, an Evangelical pastor in Iran, is facing execution for apostasy. Nadarkhani converted to Christianity as an adult. Although he never was a practicing Muslim, he has Muslim ancestry — which means, according to the Iranian courts, that his conversion qualifies as apostasy, a capital offense. Under the Iranian courts’ reading of Islamic law, Nadarkani must be given three public opportunities to renounce his apostasy before being subject to the death penalty. He has already refused twice to return to Islam; his third opportunity comes in an Iranian court this week, after which he may be executed. Mattingly criticizes the media for failing to cover this story, after all the attention given to the American hikers Iran released earlier this week. — MLM
Crockpot and Microwave Catholics
Here’s an interesting column by David Gibson from a couple of days ago about Catholics who have been raised as such from birth (often within a family structure), and those who convert to Catholicism later in life. Gibson mentions it himself, but William James’s discussion of conversion in The Varieties of Religious Experience seems to reflect a preference for the latter. Peter Berger is quoted at the end of the piece as saying that “religion today is a choice, and we are all converts to one degree or another[.]” Maybe that’s right, though I wonder whether it might also be right to say that “choice” is a concept with many attendant and very different conceptions. — MOD [x-posted MOJ]