CFT's bi-weekly CHRISTIAN NEWS

31 July 2000

* NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN HARD AND SOFT DRUGS - There is an artificial division between hard and soft drugs according to Prof Bertha Madras. Speaking at the Doctors for Life conference "The Threat of Drugs and the Need for High Level Action", Prof Madras (from Harvard Medical School) called for a change in thinking towards the false perception that marijuana is a "soft" and less dangerous drug. There are a number of provable links between marijuana and violence, damage to the brain and other dangerous consequences.

The DFL conference was attended by a number of mayors from various South African cities and it is expected that they will be forming a "South African Cities Against Drugs" as a sister organisation of "European Cities Against Drugs."

* THEFT OF ABORTED FOETUS BAFFLES COPS - KZN police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the theft of an aborted foetus at the Madadeni Hospital, near Newcastle, and the discovery of another in a dustbin near an Iscor hostel in the area on 24 July. The hospital superintendent, Dr Marek Stawicki, said that the mother was still at the hospital. "The foetus was under 500g and was therefore not supposed to be buried but to be incinerated. While it was in storage, it was taken from the hospital". The stolen foetus was later found dumped near a dirt road. Police could not say if both incidents were linked. "It is possible that the foetuses were taken for muti and then the perpetrators either didn't want them any more or they were disturbed," said Captain Sibongile Mthembu. (Sowetan, 26 July 2000)

* NO PROTECTION FOR SUNDAYS VIOLATES FAMILY LIFE - The African Christian Democratic Party believes government's decision to make Sunday a normal working day will be detrimental to family life and is a decision that places financial considerations over the interests of workers and their families. The cabinet has approved Labour Law amendments would will bring an end to extra pay for work on Sundays. The ACDP believes that by protecting Sunday as a day of rest, more people are able to set one day aside each week to spend time with their spouses and families. A possible result of this decision may be a situation where either a wife or husband is obliged by his employer to work on a Sunday. Workers, especially those with the least bargaining power, will find it very difficult to set aside a day that is specifically dedicated to spending time relaxing with their family. Furthermore the ACDP believes that a country should honour one day a week as a day of rest. (ACDP, July 2000)

* BRITISH GP ENDORSES BLUMHARDT'S OPINION ON MENTAL ILLNESS - Dr EJ Ben-Eliezer (East Sussex) admits that most GPs will know how little antidepressants can do for patients. Blumhardt, a 19th century German pastor working in the Black Forest, had helped a number of people with mental and physical illness (on whom the medical establishment had given up) find remission of their disease. According to Dr Ben-Eliezer, "Blumhardt knew that most psychiatrists... ignore the fact that people have an innate sense of right and wrong, and that no amount of drugs or counselling could relieve them from the sense of burden they felt over past wrong doings. Medical treatment was unable to offer them what they needed most: forgiveness. This was not a question of dramatic emotional conversions, but simply a chance to share with a confidante and feel forgiven". Dr Ben-Eliezer says that mental illness is not completely understood, with the mind being open to influences other than pharmacological ones. Several of Dr Ben-Eliezer's patients on antidepressants are no longer on this medication, since taking Blumhardt's approach.(British Medical Journal, Volume 320, 24 June 2000)

* KENTUCKY BARRED FROM ERECTING TEN COMMANDMENTS - A US federal judge on 25 July prohibited the state from erecting a monument to the Ten Commandments on the Capitol grounds. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Joseph Hood said putting the monument on display would amount to government endorsement of religion. (RWN, 27 July 2000)

* `CREATOR' LANGUAGE STIRS TALK - A new curriculum that encourages Georgia teachers to promote `respect for the creator's drawing criticism that it violates the separation of church and state. `Respect for the creator' is one of 27 traits that schools must encourage as part of a character curriculum that takes effect this year. Among the other traits: courage, patriotism, citizenship, honesty, fairness, kindness, tolerance, punctuality and cleanliness. In north Georgia's Lumpkin County, the school board voted this week not to teach the creator curriculum until the state attorney general issues an opinion on whether the requirement violates the Constitution. People for the American Way, a national civil-liberties group, said it may sue Lumpkin County and the state over the language. The group is representing parents of two Lumpkin schoolchildren who object to the language. "The government can't tell citizens they must have respect for God or the creator or whatever name the government wants to use," said Judith Schaeffer, deputy legal counsel for the group. Legislators who approved the character law in 1997 said the creator curriculum was acceptable because it does not specify a religion. "It allows everybody to look at it through all different theories of creation," said state Sen. Richard Marable, chairman of the Senate Education Committee. "'`Respect for the creator' is very open." (AP)

* EVOLUTION DEBATE IS HOT ISSUE IN KANSAS POLITICS - Not too long ago, the biggest complaint about the Kansas Board of Education was that no one knew exactly what it did or who served on it. A lack of visibility isn't the board's problem now, after its approval last year of new science testing standards that de-emphasize evolution. The decision has become the hottest issue in Kansas politics, with unprecedented attention and spending in the campaigns for board seats. (RWN, 27 July 2000)

* MUSLIM'S 'WIFE-BEATING GUIDE' OUTRAGES WOMEN - (Madrid) Women's organisations in Spain are outraged by a book written by a Muslim cleric that contains advice on how men can beat their wives without leaving marks. The sixth chapter of "Women in Islam" by Imam M.K. Mostafa says in some cases a beating is appropriate for disciplining a disobedient wife - as long as the punches "don't leave cuts or bruises", according to the Spanish news agency Europa Press. Angeles Ruiz, president of the European Women's Lobby, said that "This book promotes and give instructions on abusing women. It is a guide that should not be in circulation". On 21 July the coalition of 30 women's groups filed a lawsuit in a Barcelona court to have the book withdrawn. They invoked a Spanish law designed to protect women from discrimination in the home and the workplace. (South African Independent, 25 July 2000)

* BRITISH MOVE TO MAKE GAY SEX EQUAL UNDER THE LAW - The last remaining laws that distinguish between homosexual and heterosexual acts would be abolished under sweeping changes to Britain's sex laws set out in a Home Office paper published 26 July. At the same time, the laws against sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults would be made wider and tougher in a review intended to simplify the law and bring it more into line with what a Home Office described as "modern" attitudes. But none of the proposals would be made law until after the public and interested organisations such as churches and charities have been consulted, Charles Clarke, deputy to Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, said. Ministers are bracing themselves for a likely outcry over the sections of the report which would make homosexuality and heterosexuality equal in law. According to the report "any new or amended offence should operate in a gender and sexuality neutral way". (London Telegraph, 27 July 2000)

* STUDENTS ACCUSE HIGH SCHOOL OF RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION - (Tulsa, Okla.) - A federal lawsuit alleges that Travis Henderson, principal of McLain High School has violated the constitutional rights of students Barry Walton, Toshia Goodou and Doris Walton by prohibiting the organization of a Bible club at the school. The violated rights include freedom of speech, free exercise of religion, freedom of association and freedom from religious discrimination. Mr Henderson denied the allegations and said that "everything that has happened has been within policy." The students allege that Henderson would not allow the Bible club organizers to place notices in the school bulletin or within the school or to otherwise notify the student body about the effort. They allege that he ignored two student petitions to asking him to allow the club to meet. They also allege being forbidden to meet at the school prior to the school day start for "prayer and religious associatiion in '98-99, while meetings were allowed for nonreligious purposes. (Associated Press, 19 July 2000)

In the meantime an Indiana school district (Crown Point Community School Corporation) has paid a local church nearly $15,000 in attorney's fees after the church sued the school district in federal court for banning religious services in school facilities. Northwest Community Church filed a federal lawsuit last June after being anned from meeting in the Solon Robinson School auditorium in August 1998. A nine-year-old district policy prohibited religious groups from using school buildings, even though secular groups were allowed to do so. August 1999 the school district unanimously reversed its policy, giving congregations access to school buildings at the same rental rates as secular organisations. The church and the school district subsequently settled the free-speech aspects of the lawsuit. (The Freedom Forum Online, 17 July 2000)

* RUSSIA STEPS UP EXPULSION OF US EVANGELISTS - (Moscow) Foreign missionaries are being forced out of Russia and obstructed in their work in greater numbers under President Putin than in the year before his rise to power, British research has found. The FSB, successor to the KGB, is often behind the harassment of missionaries and may have been encouraged to act more boldly by a new Russian defence doctrine that singles them out as a possible threat to national security, according to the Oxford-based Keston Institute. Seven cases were cited in a series of reports by the institute, which began to monitor religious freedom in the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was itself denounced by the Soviet Union as a cover for spying operations in 1988, include the expulsion of 11 American missionaries from the autonomous Muslim republic of Bashkortostan. They were accused of activities "incompatible" with their humanitarian aid visas. A second case involved the expulsion of a US missionary from the southern city of Volgograd, where shortly afterwards a local newspaper quoted the FSB as saying "practically all American religious organisations working abroad are in some way connected with the US security services". (FL, 21 July 2000)

* GAY PRESSURE ON DR. LAURA SCHLESSINGER SHOW - (Los Angeles), - Controversial radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger has issued a "call to action" urging loyal listeners to help prevent advertising sponsors of her show from defecting under pressure from gay activists. Schlessinger, who dispenses moral advice on a weekday syndicated radio show that reaches an estimated 18 million listeners, has sparked an uproar from gay and lesbian groups for her on-air references to homosexuality as "deviant" and "a biological error." The controversy has cost the show a dozen national advertisers since April, Kraig Kitchin, president and chief operating officer of Premiere Radio Networks, syndicator of the "Dr. Laura" show, said. Still, the show has retained more than 90 percent of its 148 national sponsors, and demand for advertising time on the show continues to exceed supply, Kitchin told Reuters. (Reuters, 24 July)

* HIGH-RISK STUDENTS PAID TO ATTEND CLASS - (Rochester) - Selected eighth-grade students considered to be at "high risk" for dropping out of school will be getting paid while they learn. The students will earn $6 an hour while taking summer classes as part of a federally funded program that would give them the opportunity to earn half of a high school credit. The program, Drop Out Prevention Through Family Support, is funded through a $75,000 Goals 2000 grant. It will focus on improving the academics of 20 at-risk students by matching them with 10 teacher-mentors during the summer and through the school year, according to grant administrator and Spaulding High School Principal Liz Mantelli. The summer component of the program will require a total of 110 hours from each student, for which they will be paid $660 gross income. (Democrat, 18 July 2000)

* BILL WOULD PROTECT BABIES BORN AFTER BOTCHED ABORTIONS - (Washington, D.C.) - After the Supreme Court overturned a Nebraska law banning partial birth abortion, hearings convened in the US House on 20 July to address the question of what defines a live birth. "If a child born alive after a botched abortion does not receive the protection of the law, what is to prevent an abortionist from simply delivering a child and killing it," asked Representative Charles Canady (R-FL), who has introduced HR 4292, The Born Alive Infant Protection Act of 2000. Canady said that the Supreme Court's ruling in the Nebraska case, Stenberg v. Carhart, has extended the original 1973 Supreme Court decision allowing mothers the right to abort "unborn children," Roe v. Wade, to now include "the violent destruction of partially born children just inches from birth." Canady worries that the Supreme Court may continue along the same line of logic and allow babies who survive an abortion to perish post partem outside the mother.(CNSNews, 21 July 2000)