Author: Maral Chavushian

Palestine News Network (PNN) - English
 Saturday
Jordanian and Palestinian Evangelicals Unite in Amman
by monjed jado
Amman /PNN/ In a moving ceremony held at the Free Evangelical Church
in Amman's Khalda neighbourhood on November 14, members of evangelical
churches in Palestine and Jordan announced the creation of a unified
coordinating alliance, made up of: the Council of Local Evangelical
Churches in The Holy Land, the Council of Evangelical Churches of
Galilee …
Amman /PNN/
In a moving ceremony held at the Free Evangelical Church in Amman's
Khalda neighbourhood on November 14, members of evangelical churches
in Palestine and Jordan announced the creation of a unified
coordinating alliance, made up of: the Council of Local Evangelical
Churches in The Holy Land, the Council of Evangelical Churches of
Galilee and the Jordan Evangelical Council.
Emad Maayah, former MP and retired Jordanian Army Major General who
heads the Jordan Evangelical Council, announced the creation of the
alliance to local dignitaries, Christian clergy of different
denominations, past and present Jordanian MPs, church members from
Jordan, Palestine and Israel, and a large crowd of local worshipers.
Evangelical churches that rose up in response to the turn of the 20th
century American missionary efforts in Jordan today number 10,000,
according to David Rihani, deputy head of the Jordanian Evangelical
Council.
The Jordan council includes Baptists, Nazarenes and members of the
World Evangelical Alliance, Assembly of God and Evangelical Free
Church.
Church leaders from Ramallah, Nazareth and Amman presented the history
of their churches and their many spiritual and community services,
including at schools, seminaries and hospitals, and a host of other
para-church activities.
The New York-based World Evangelical Alliance, established in 1846 and
boasting 600 million members, was the first to send congratulations to
the newly established alliance, Rihani reported to those attending.
The alliance is aimed at advocating by local governments for
recognition. Jordan, Palestine and Israel recognise 13 traditional
churches, but none of the evangelical churches are recognised.
Evangelical churches have been registered since as far back as 1920 as
religious institutions. In Jordan, the five evangelical churches are
registered at the Ministry of Justice.
They can carry out religious, educational, humanitarian and community
services, but are not authorised to deal with any issues regulated
through the personal status laws.
In Jordan, Palestine and Israel, every citizen must have a declared
religion and all family affairs (marriage, divorce, adoption and
inheritance) are administered and resolved through religious courts.
Christians belonging to the Evangelical churches in these countries
attempting to resolve personal disputes can only use a recognised
church court.
The newly established church alliance will be preparing to set up
church courts so as to be ready to use them once they receive official
recognition.
For decades, efforts by local leaders and world Evangelicals to gain
recognition have failed.
It is not clear why smaller churches are recognised and are given
legal status while Evangelical churches with an active presence and a
strong community effort in the region are rejected.
Some argue that the traditional churches (Orthodox, Catholic and
Armenian) are opposed to extending recognition, while others say that
Anglicans and Lutherans are hesitant to open up the gates for other
Protestant churches to receive such recognition.
But the real reason for non-recognition by the government might have
to do with issues of internal governance that the new alliance might
resolve.
Evangelicals are a trans-denominational movement that adhere to a
literal interpretation of the Bible and give high priority to
spreading Christianity. As such, they are opposed to a religious
hierarchy.
There are no bishops and patriarchs among Evangelicals, as in other
churches, which makes it difficult for governments to communicate with
or coordinate activities with them.
Each church is independent, even though in recent years a strong
effort has been made to bring some sort of unified coordinating
structure to their internal and national governance structures.
This unification effort will help resolve one of the obstacles often
used against Evangelicals who do not have a traditional hierarchy.
In the Middle East, strictly spiritual missionary efforts among the
Muslim-majority populations are not allowed and efforts to convert
non-Muslims are officially frowned upon.
Local Evangelical church leaders say that they abide by the laws of
the land and make themselves available to anyone who asks for
spiritual guidance, but are committed to refraining from any public
proselytising.
While Evangelism in Jordan and Palestine has its roots in the times of
foreign missionaries, today's leaders are entirely local, mostly
because of the autonomous and independent nature of Evangelical church
governance.
All church leaders as well as the leaders of the newly established
alliance are patriotic Arabs well respected in their communities.
They would like to practise their faith while holding on to their love
of country and homeland.
The announcement of the church alliance on Tuesday began with the
singing of the national anthem and various presentations and speeches
praising national leaders.
Maayah said that the date of the signing ceremony was meant to
coincide with King Hussein's birth.
Special emphasis was put, in the presentations, on the efforts on
behalf of the Palestinian cause, including holding the "Christ at the
checkpoint" conference by the Bethlehem Bible College, one of the
institutions belonging to the newly established coalition.
Evangelical churches' effort to have a unified coalition is an
important step towards gaining recognition and standing so as to
better serve members of their parishes. But a more important effort is
needed to bring much wider unity within the already tiny Christian
Arab community in Jordan and the Holy Land.

Tufts Daily: Tufts University
 Friday
Professors Boghosian, Duchin apply mathematics to social problems -
The Tufts Daily
by Constantinos Angelakis
Applied mathematics students at Tufts may have the opportunity to
cross over into social science. Two professors are pushing the
boundaries of interdisciplinary math by investigating problems in
social sciences through their research.
Professor Bruce Boghosian has been working on modeling wealth
inequality for about five years, beginning during his time as
president of the American University of Armenia. The country, which
became independent after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991,
underwent drastic liberalization and, like many other former Soviet
states, quickly became an oligarchy, according to Boghosian.
"Unfortunately, it's easier to create an oligarchy than it is to break
loose from it," Boghosian said. "It is an unfortunately stable form of
government."
Boghosian's work now sets out to model the inequality that results
from free markets over time. His model illustrates the increasing
trend of asymmetry in the economy as wealth becomes concentrated in
fewer and fewer hands.
"The accuracy with which we're able to match the wealth distributions
is remarkable," he said. "To my knowledge, no other first-principles
theory is able to achieve the same accuracy. That's what grounds it in
reality, somehow, and makes it more than just a mathematical model."
He explained that the belief that the current economic system will
result in equilibrium dates back to the Enlightenment, during which
freedom of transaction was embraced following a period of restricted
economy in Europe.
"You can understand why people regarded the opportunity to engage in
transactions of one's own free will as a sort of freedom from that,
but there's a bias that's hidden in it. There's an asymmetry, and it's
not the least bit obvious," Boghosian said. "I wish that it didn't
require so much mathematics to describe."
Boghosian noted that his work takes a different approach than
traditional economic models of equilibrium. However, economics
professors at Tufts have been generally receptive to his work.
"They've all been really encouraging, in fact, and supportive of it,"
he said. "I'm not sure they believe it, but they're welcoming to an
outsider who is really just learning about economic issues."
Boghosian has also taught two courses in the Department of Mathematics
regarding wealth inequality, which he said generated significant
levels of student interest.
Senior Chengli Li, an applied mathematics major, has worked with
Boghosian on his research, including as part of the summer scholars
program this year.
"I think it's really interesting to solve economic problems from a
math perspective," Li, who is also an economics major, said. "I think
from the math perspective it's a really interesting new way of looking
at it."
Li said that she enjoyed the opportunity to apply her knowledge of
mathematics across disciplines and toward issues which she has
observed in the world.
"I'm an international student, I'm from China, so the place where I
came [from] was a mixture of really poor people and really wealthy
people," she said. "So I know there's an issue, and this research is
really able to apply what I've learned to the things that I've heard
at school or the things that I've seen."
Ultimately, Boghosian said, there must be some outside intervention to
counter the continued concentration of wealth.
"One thing that we found clearly is that redistribution is the only
thing that keeps an economy stable," Boghosian said. "I mean, there
can be many mechanisms for redistribution, but a redistributive term
in the wealth distribution evolution equation is important."
Boghosian said this redistribution could be done through a variety of
mechanisms. He added that transparency was of critical importance
because many people hide their wealth.
"There's an advantage to taxing wealth directly, even if it's a tiny
tax, not enough to hurt anybody, but it would oblige people to declare
their wealth in the same way they declare their income," he said.
He hopes that by presenting his data, the political will of people may
be more easily impacted to make changes.
"In my opinion, one of the things that can influence political will is
the clear demonstration that the system we have now, even though it
may seem fair, isn't," he said. "It is inherent and endogenously
unfair and biased."
While Boghosian's work has vast implications on pragmatic economic
policy, he said he is focused primarily on using his model to analyze
current data from around the world.
"It would be wonderful in the future to be able to connect our models
with real public policy, but that will take years," he said. "That's
something that we are working on, and people are beginning to think
about, but it's not ready for implementation yet."
Elsewhere in the mathematics department, Associate Professor Moon
Duchin is also addressing social issues through her ongoing research
in gerrymandering. Her work uses geometry to look into the potential
unfair drawing of U.S. districts in order to benefit particular
political groups, also known as gerrymandering. Duchin said that she
is on sabbatical this semester while pursuing her gerrymandering
research full-time.
"Because [voting] is done by districts, it depends really heavily on
what those districts look like, and so the question is, 'What should
be the rules about the shapes of districts?'" she said. "If you have
some rules about what the [districts] can look like, that limits the
power of the map-drawer."
She said that, while members of the mathematics department do not
often do research into social issues, applied math does have a strong
presence in some more traditionally related fields.
"One thing that's cool about the mathematics department at Tufts is
that it has both pure and applied mathematicians in the same
department," she said.
However, Duchin herself does not have a background in applied
mathematics. She said that she became interested in the topic of
gerrymandering while preparing to teach the math of social choice
class at Tufts, after noticing that work on the geometry of districts
was out of date.
"For me, this is a turning point, because my background is in
theoretical, pure mathematics," Duchin said. "This is the first time
I've gotten into something so applied. And I didn't fully realize in
the past that cutting-edge math could be applied to politics instead
of the traditional crossover fields like physics, chemistry and
biology."
Duchin said that the type of mathematical work associated with social
sciences like economics and political science is often called
quantitative social science. Although Tufts does not have a program in
that field, Duchin pointed out the Science, Technology, and Society
major, of which she is the director, as an example of bridging the gap
between social science and humanities.
"For students who are interested in crossing over between STEM fields
and books and real life, that's exactly what niche STS is trying to
fill - to be a bridge between math and engineering and other technical
areas and the practical application in human culture," she said.
Duchin said that Tufts' encouragement of interdisciplinary and
civically engaged work has been a positive influence on her own
endeavors. For example, she has worked with professors in the
political science department as well as members of the Jonathan M.
Tisch College of Civic Life.
"As you see, Tufts is an amazing place to be," Duchin said. "It's
exciting to be here because there are really not that many places that
are as serious about interdisciplinarity as Tufts, and the Tisch
College focus on integrated civics is unique. So for me, it's been a
real treat to be here and work with people in so many other fields."