Letter From America (About The Vanguard in the Fight Against Ebola)

Time Magazine Honoring Ebola Fighters a Victory for Christians Worldwide

by Frances Martel  

11 Dec 2014

BreitbartNews

In her article explaining why Time honored Ebola medical workers as their Person of the Year in 2014, managing editor Nancy Gibbs describes the workers' weapons as "bleach and a prayer." No description could be more apt, as a great number of those on the front lines in West Africa were working to serve Christian organizations, and none were shy in expressing their belief that Christianity would save them from harm.

Global organizations, from the Center for Disease Control to the World Health Organization to the World Bank sounded the alarm on the Ebola disaster this summer. By the end of September, the WHO declared that the "world is losing the battle" to contain the disease. Some nations responded-- most notably, the United States sent thousands of troops to Liberia-- but many government entities did little. China pledged millions to the cause, but Chinese industry leaving the region because of Ebola could significantly damage the economies of west Africa just as much. In December, the WHO missed its own containment goals, including having 70% of both Ebola victims properly buried and 70% of Ebola patients isolated in medical facilities (only in Guinea did they achieve this goal).

Amid the lack of enthusiasm internationally to fight Ebola-- and the lack of resources on the part of panicked organizations like the WHO-- smaller Christian organizations stepped in, sending individual health care workers to fight Ebola on the front lines in the affected countries. These groups, with minimal resources compared to the world's largest governments, made it a personal effort to combat the disease.

Perhaps no Christian charity worker has been more high-profile than Dr. Kent Brantly, the first American doctor to contract Ebola.

Letter From America (About Ground Zero in Liberia)

"We Rest on Thee and In Thy Name We Go"

He’s Risking His Own Well-Being to Battle Ebola: Humanitarian Leader Reveals Why He’s on the Ground in Liberia

TheBlaze

Oct. 16, 2014 12:37pm

Billy Hallowell

With the dire Ebola outbreak continuing to rage, countless missionaries and humanitarian aid workers are risking their lives abroad in an effort to try and stop the virus in its tracks.  Among those humanitarian leaders is David Darg, the vice-president of international operations for Operation Blessing, a Christian charity known for taking aid and resources to dangerous areas across the globe.

Darg, who recently told TheBlaze about his organization’s work to train Liberian churches and distribute liquid chlorine, said in a follow-up interview Wednesday that the situation in Monrovia, Liberia, where he is stationed is “really intense.”

“It’s one of the most intense missions I’ve been on in years, because you’re constantly on guard,” he said.

Letter From America (About Those Dastadly Missionaries)

Showing Up the Home Team

One of the complaints made by Emperor Julian the Apostate against Christians is that they were so much better and committed to taking care of the poor, the sick, and the indigent than his fellow pagans were.  Echoes of resentment against Christians for their "doing good to all men" are found in several classical Roman authors and writers.  Now it is appearing once again.

Pagans and Christians

Ross Douthat

New York Times

October 3, 2014

Occasionally in the debates about Christianity’s weakened position in American culture, you’ll hear traditionalists and conservatives analogize the Christian situation, now or soon, to the environment the faith faced in its earliest centuries, as an embattled minority in a hostile pagan empire. I’m not a particular fan of this analogy, for various reasons: Not only because lions-and-catacombs imagery risks trivializing the concept of persecution at a time when Christians outside the United States face actual Diocletian-style consequences for their beliefs (and don’t always receive the charity they deserve from their American co-believers), but also because describing contemporary American culture as pagan in the style of the ancient world strikes me as a category error, which underplays the extent to which middlebrow American spirituality is still infused with Christian-ish sentiments and assumptions and ideas, and underplays, as well, just how radically different a thoroughly repaganized society would be from the one we (happily) inhabit today.

All of that said, I wouldn’t want to say that there are never echoes of the ancient world in contemporary religious debates.

Letter From America (After Surviving Ebola)

Calling Time On Ebola

The media have carried the news of the full recovery from Ebola by two US missionaries to Liberia, West Africa.  After contracting the disease, they were flown home and treated at Emory University Hospital.  Not without controversy.  A virtual, viral flash mob rapidly formed driven by the irrational fear of a bubonic plague about to kill everyone in the United States.  One conservative commentator, Ann Coulter complained that it did not make any sense for US missionaries to go abroad.  Weren't there enough problems to face in the United States?  Poor Ann overlooked a slight problem with her argument: when God calls, no man can successfully gainsay.  A reluctant prophet by the name of Jonah springs to mind.  Apparently, Ann had neglected to read Matthew 28: 18-20 recently.

In any event, Dr Kent Brantly has released a public statement  which he read after being released from Emory University Hospital.  It bears testimony to the Spirit of Christ, Himself.