In Christianity, evangelism is the act of preaching the gospel with the intention of sharing the message and teachings of Jesus Christ.
William Franklin Graham III is an American evangelist and missionary. He frequently engages in Christian revival tours and political commentary. He is president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and of Samaritan's Purse, an international Christian relief organization. Graham became a "committed Christian" in 1974 and was ordained in 1982, and has since become a public speaker and author. He is a son of the American evangelist Billy Graham.
The Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) is an international Christian-based broadcast television network and the world's largest religious television network. TBN was headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, until March 3, 2017, when it sold its highly visible office park, Trinity Christian City. The broadcaster retained its studios in nearby Tustin. Auxiliary studio facilities are located in Irving, Hendersonville, Gadsden, Decatur, Miami and Orlando, Tulsa and New York City. TBN has characterized itself as broadcasting programs hosted by a diverse group of ministries from Evangelical, traditional Protestant and Catholic denominations, non-profit charities, Messianic Jewish and Christian media personalities. TBN also offers a wide range of original programming and faith-based films from various distributors.
In religious organizations, the laity consists of all members who are not part of the clergy, usually including any non-ordained members of religious orders, e.g. a nun or lay brother.
A Christian mission is an organized effort for the propagation of the Christian faith. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries, to carry on evangelism or other activities, such as educational or hospital work. Sometimes individuals are sent and are called missionaries, and historically may have been based in mission stations. When groups are sent, they are often called mission teams and they do mission trips. There are a few different kinds of mission trips: short-term, long-term, relational and those that simply help people in need. Some people choose to dedicate their whole lives to mission. Missionaries preach the Christian faith, and provide humanitarian aid. Christian doctrines permit the provision of aid without requiring religious conversion. However, Christian missionaries are implicated in the genocide of indigenous peoples. Around 100,000 native people in California, U.S., or 1/3 of the native population, are said to have died due to missions.
Embedded journalism refers to news reporters being attached to military units involved in armed conflicts. While the term could be applied to many historical interactions between journalists and military personnel, it first came to be used in the media coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The United States military responded to pressure from the country's news media who were disappointed by the level of access granted during the 1991 Gulf War and the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
Opposition to the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) stemmed from numerous factors, including the view that the United States invasion of Afghanistan was illegal under international law and constituted an unjustified aggression, the view that the continued military presence constituted a foreign military occupation, the view that the war did little to prevent terrorism but increased its likelihood, and views on the involvement of geo-political and corporate interests. Also giving rise to opposition to the war were civilian casualties, the cost to taxpayers, and the length of the war to date.
The Catholic Church in Afghanistan is part of the worldwide Catholic Church. There are very few Catholics/Christians in this overwhelmingly Muslim country—just over 200 attend Mass in its only chapel—and freedom of religion has been difficult to obtain in recent times, especially under the new de-facto Taliban regime.
During the War in Afghanistan, according to the Costs of War Project the war killed 176,000 people in Afghanistan: 46,319 civilians, 69,095 military and police and at least 52,893 opposition fighters. However, the death toll is possibly higher due to unaccounted deaths by "disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure, and/or other indirect consequences of the war." According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, the conflict killed 212,191 people. The Cost of War project estimated in 2015 that the number who have died through indirect causes related to the war may be as high as 360,000 additional people based on a ratio of indirect to direct deaths in contemporary conflicts.
Christians have historically comprised a small community in Afghanistan. The total number of Christians in Afghanistan is currently estimated to be between 15,000 and 20,000 according to International Christian Concern. Almost all Afghan Christians are converts from Islam. The Pew Research Center estimates that 40,000 Afghan Christians were living in Afghanistan in 2010. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan did not recognize any Afghan citizen as being a Christian, with the exception of many expatriates. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan continues to deny the presence of Christians while carrying out renewed persecutions against religious minorities.
Redemptoris missio, subtitled On the permanent validity of the Church's missionary mandate, is an encyclical by Pope John Paul II published on 7 December 1990. The release coincided with the twenty-fifth anniversary of Vatican II's Decree on the Church's Missionary Activity, Ad gentes. It is devoted to the subject of "the urgency of missionary activity" and in it the pope wished "to invite the Church to renew her missionary commitment."
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation ('MRFF) is a watchdog group and advocacy organization founded in 2005 by Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein. The group's goal states it will, "Ensure that members of the United States Armed Forces receive the Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom to which they are entitled by virtue of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment."
Michael L. Weinstein is an American attorney, businessman, and former Air Force officer. He is the founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and author of With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military and No Snowflake in an Avalanche, both of which describe purported Christian evangelical and fundamentalist proselytizing by some members of the military.
Religion in Vanuatu is dominated by various branches of Christianity. Vanuatu is an archipelago made up of 13 larger islands, and approximately 70 smaller surrounding islands, each home to multitudes of diverse cultural and religious communities. As of 2020, the population of approximately 300,000 people speak as many as 145 languages throughout the island nation. Approximately 82% of the population of Vanuatu is Christian. An estimated 28% is Presbyterian, 12% Roman Catholic, 15% Anglican, and 12% Seventh-day Adventist. Groups that together constitute 15% include the Church of Christ, United Pentecostal Church, Assemblies of God, Neil Thomas Ministries, the Apostolic Church and other Christian denominations.
Events from the year 2010 in Afghanistan.
The British Government and Jihad is a book written in 1900 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam. An alternative title is the True Meaning of Jihad. It was published on 22 May 1900 and was translated into English in 2006, by Islam International Publications.
The U.S.–Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement (SASPA), officially titled Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the United States of America, was an agreement between the former government of Afghanistan and the United States of America that provides the long-term framework for the relationship between Afghanistan and the United States of America after the drawdown of U.S. forces in the Afghanistan war. SASPA went into effect on 4 July 2012, as stated by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said on 8 July 2012, at the Tokyo Conference on Afghanistan: "Like a number of countries represented here, the United States and Afghanistan signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement that went into effect four days ago." SASPA was broadened by the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) that both countries were obliged to negotiate within one year, which resulted on 30 September 2014 in the "Security and defense cooperation agreement between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the United States of America" (SADCA).
Recovering from Religion (RfR) is an international non-profit organization that helps people who have left religion, are in process of leaving, or are dealing with problems arising out of theistic doubt or non-belief. RfR provides support groups, telephone and chat helplines, an online peer support community, and online meetings for "people in their most urgent time of need". It is headquartered in Kansas City, Kansas.
The Afghan Files are a set of Australian Defence Force documents about the operation of Australia's special forces in Afghanistan. The documents were leaked to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) by David McBride, upon which seven stories were published. The documents covered a wide range of topics, however most notably it detailed multiple cases of possible unlawful killings of unarmed men and children. In response to the leak, the Australian Federal Police raided the ABC's offices in June 2019, confiscating all material related to the matter.
On 15 August 2021, Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul was captured by the Taliban after a major insurgent offensive that began in May 2021. This led to the overthrowing of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan under President Ashraf Ghani and the reinstatement of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban.
