"CHURCH POLITICS" is the Church's internal politics and is not about the Church's participation in the public square, advocating matters of legislative policy or speaking truth to power.  That's Church and politics.

Not a few would like to deny that there is church politics as the term often conjures up negative connotations such as backbiting, gossiping, and manipulating, maneuvering and misguided power. 

Church leaders - lay and clerics alike - are seen to compete with one another in exercising authority in determining the way things should or should not be done in a faith community.  Church politics often take root on the diocesan, parish and BEC levels as well as in church-based groups.  Alliances are formed between people and groups with competing interest and the church is tremendously wounded and the church is split into factions of "old guards" and "new guards".

THE United States has put Malaysia back on the blacklist of countries trafficking in people after removing the country from the list last year.

The State Department annual 'Trafficking in Persons Report 2009', which examined efforts in more than 173 countries to combat trafficking for forced labour, prostitution, military service and other purposes, has Malaysia sharing the blacklist with 16 other countries.

IT has often been asked, if the Church founded by Jesus Christ was One, why is there today such a vast collection of Christians claiming to be a part of the Body of Christ, and yet not being in full unity with one another?

Over the centuries, various events have taken place in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church which have caused multiple schisms (i.e. divorces) to take place.  Of course, the issues surrounding these schisms often revolved around those of dogmatic beliefs. 

But as will be elaborated herein, disputes over doctrinal concerns were often also tainted by human realities of pride, power, and prejudice.  Had those disputes been handled purely based on dogmatic concerns, the schisms that had resulted from those conflicts would perhaps have not been thus tragic.