CHRISTIAN NEWS

31 December 2001 - (Special 'Overview of Christmas' Edition)

* SPIRITUAL INFORMATION ONLINE IN HIGH DEMAND - One out of four adult American Internet users have sought out religious or spiritual information online, according to a study released Dec. 23 by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Up from 2 million last year, the number is now more than 3 million - more popular than other online activities such as banking, gambling or stock trading, as reported by Reuters, and Yahoo! News. "But churches and synagogues are unlikely to empty out any time soon," remarked Elena Larsen, the report author. ..."Almost all of them already belong to some sort of congregation." The study found that those engaged in religious activities online are more likely to search for educational or reference material (69 percent), or research other faiths (50 percent), than offer spiritual advice through e-mail (35 percent), or seek it out (21 percent). Those most active online also are most active in their congregations, she added. (Crosswalk.com News)

* CHURCHGOERS LIVE LONGER, STUDY FINDS - Weekly attendance at religious services increases the longevity of worshippers, a new study has found, possibly because of a greater inner peace. Even after accounting for health-risk factors such as smoking, churchgoers had lower mortality rates, concluded Doug Oman, a research scientist at the Human Population Laboratory in Berkeley. His results were presented before the American Psychological Association in August and will be published in the International Journal for Psychiatry and Medicine. Religious attendance cannot be proven as the cause of lower mortality rates, but evidence is accumulating, said Oman. Oman's findings are based on a health study of 6,545 residents of Alameda County that began in 1965 and continues today. Caryl Learned, 82, of Sacramento, who attends Trinity Cathedral Church at least once a week, said she's not surprised. "I believe it," she said. "It's just a part of me. I really do believe it calms one. You always have something to fall back on, a confidence. I've lived a better life." (Sacbee, 24 December)

* CHRISTMAS PERSECUTION AVERTED IN INDONESIA – (Jakarta) Indonesia's Christians filled churches in record numbers during Christmas services as the threat of a "Bloody Christmas" passed without incident, reports International Christian Concern (ICC) of Washington, DC. A spokesman for ICC says, "Unlike the past two years, no churches were bombed in Jakarta or any other cities. Attacks against Christian villages in central Sulawesi and the Malukan islands have, at least for now, subsided. We praise God for His answer to the prayers of Christians throughout the world who responded to the call for help following an ICC trip to the Poso region on the island of Sulawesi at the end of November." The ICC spokesman said that as many as 15,000 armed "Jihad" militants were threatening to "kill all the Christians". Snyder added, "Fortunately, in early December, the Indonesian government ordered 4,000 military troops into the Poso region, which was the first indication that the government may be willing to help stop terrorism from spreading inside the country..." (ChristianNewsToday.com)

* FINLAND’S BISHOPS SAY NO TO CEREMONIES FOR HOMOSEXUAL COUPLES - Following a Finnish parliament vote accepting a law on registration of same-sex relationships, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF) says it will not conduct ceremonies for same-sex couples. In a statement, the ELCF bishops stress the difference between registration and marriage, emphasising that society must support child upbringing that strengthens the relationship between a man and woman. The marriage service and blessing of marriage are one way for the church to support this relationship, the bishops say. Under the proposed law, passed on September 28 by a 99 - 84 vote, same-sex couples will be able to register their relationship with the civil authority. Once registered, they will have almost the same legal rights as married couples except the right to adopt and to a family name. The law comes into force in 2002. Note: "Evangelical" is used in the official Church name to mean "non-Catholic", not necessarily "evangelical" in doctrine. (Family World News, December)

* CANADIAN COURT UPHOLDS FAMILY’S RIGHT IN SPANKING CASE - The attempt of the Family and Children's Services of St.Thomas and Elgin (FCS) to have a court declare a Christian family in contempt of a court order against the use of spanking has failed (21 December). The Aylmer family’s seven children had been forcibly apprehended by social workers when the parents refused to promise to not spank their children with objects such as a switch. They were happy to hear the judge rule that he lacked the authority to decide if the parents were in contempt and also refused to grant the social work agency a restraining order against the family's pastor - who FCS claimed was counseling the family to disobey the court order. The London Free Press reported that the parties agreed, "If the parents strike their children or feel that they will do so, they are to notify Family and Children's Services of St. Thomas and Elgin." Furthermore, reporting on the case will be curtailed as the parents, their lawyers and FCS have agreed not to speak to the media until the case is resolved. (Lifesite.net)

* CHRISTMAS CHURCH ATTENDANCE 'UP 20%' - Church of England cathedrals have seen a significant rise in the number of worshippers attending December services this year. Officials said attendance figures for the Advent period could be more than 20% up on last year. The Rev Lynda Barley, the Church of England's research and statistics director, said: "First counts from every part of England make it clear that the numbers will be significantly above last year's figure of 660,000 worshippers over the Christmas period. "We have every reason to believe that the 20% increase in the number of people receiving communion between 1999 and 2000 will be more than equalled this year." Average weekly attendance at cathedral services during the year is about 25,500, according to Church of England figures, which also showed a gradual increase in congregation sizes on Sundays. (25 December, Yahoo)

* PRIEST BANS ‘LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM’ – (London) A priest has banned the Christmas carol "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem" in protest at fighting in the Middle East which has turned Christ's birthplace into a ‘no-go’ zone, the Sunday Express reported. According to Canon Jim Pannet, who is a priest in Purley, south of London, the carol's second line "How still we see thee lie" was inappropriate while the fear of snipers was causing people to fear venturing into Bethlehem's Manger Square. "I feel strongly that we have to do something for the Christians in the Holy Land and have to make a public declaration. We won't be singing 'Oh Little Town of Bethlehem' in my church, not on Sunday," Pannet said. However David Frost, the Church of England vicar of a neighbouring parish, said he would be happy for the carol to be sung in his church. "The political situation in Palestine would be very familiar to Jesus if he was being born today. Just put the Roman army in place of the current occupying tanks and in that sense nothing has changed." (YahooNews, 23 December)

* CHRISTMAS CHEER IN ISRAEL – (Jerusalem) Tourists and pilgrims might have been sparse in Bethlehem during this Christmas, as the economic and security situation remained difficult. But local residents of the town where Jesus was born said they would celebrate Christmas regardless. Local Christians are reportedly filling the churches. More than 1,200 local Christians were invited to attend a dinner at one of the Bethlehem hotels, which was to include a meal, Scripture reading and a sermon. Gifts, packaged and sent from children in America, was to be distributed to children as part of a ministry connected with evangelist Billy Graham. Dr Bishara Awad, President of the Bethlehem Bible College, said that there was to be special prayers. Despite the troubles, Christian faith seems to be growing, Awad said. "People are seeking the Lord more. In times of persecution people turn to the Lord. They have a refuge to go to and that is the Lord Jesus Christ." (CNSNews.com, 12 December)

* CHRISTMAS MESSAGES OF BUSH AND THE QUEEN – In her 50^th Christmas Day message, the Queen condemned the September 11 terrorist attacks on America and stressed the importance of faith. She said strong and open communities were important and that Christ's birth so long ago remains a powerful symbol of hope for a better future. (Skynews, 26 Dec)
President Bush had urged Americans who had lost friends and family in the September 11 attacks, to find "comfort and hope" during the festive period. "America grieves with you, and we hope you'll especially find the comfort and hope of Christmas". Mr Bush also thanked US troops serving in Afghanistan and elsewhere. "Even in this time of war, we pray for peace on Earth and good will toward men, and we continue to ask God's blessings on the United States." (26 Dec, SkyNews)

* CHRISTMAS WISH FOR SA GIRL COMES TRUE – (Pretoria, SA) In a real Christmas tale of joy and generocity, little Confidence Magagula received the hope of going home to her family for Christmas, boasting a new glass eye. After a friend threw away Confidence's prosthetic eye the week before Christmas, her mother was afraid to take the child home for Christmas as she feared her grandmother would reject her. Through the goodwill of a Pretoria businesswoman, Lam Ebersohn, and several people who had pledged to help pay for a new eye, the search for an occularist to fit an eye in time, was on. Ebersohn tracked down Randburg occularist Beryl Carvalho to KwaZulu-Natal where she was holidaying. When Carvalho heard about Confidence's plight, she immediately offered to cut short her holiday and fly back at her own cost to fit a new eye. (News24, 23 December)

* TOWNS DEBATE CONTROVERSY OF NATIVITY SCENES – (Massachusettes) Lexington and Norwood have passed ordinances that make it illegal for towns to sponsor any Nativity scene displays, but some residents said that the laws compromise their religious expression. NewsCenter 5's Ed Harding reports that Lexington's decision renews the ongoing debate over a Nativity scene on the town common for another year. "We don't believe in the sterilization of the common, as a majority of selectmen do," Michael O'Sullivan of the Knights of Columbus said. "We believe that proper religious expression should be done." There hasn't been a Nativity display on the green for two years, after town selectmen added an ordinance prohibiting unattended structures from being placed on the common for more than eight hours. The Knights of Columbus said that it was really about sacrificing religious expression for political correctness. (Bostonchannel.com, 7 December)

* INDIA SEES DRAMA ON CHRIST’S LIFE - A well-known stage production which tells the story of Christ's virgin birth, death, and resurrection is making a big impact in India. The Passion Play, which has toured extensively in the United States and other countries, recently wrapped up an extended run in India, with thousands making professions of faith in Christ. Production officials say in one city, 90% of the population came out for the play. Stan Burgett, the play's executive director, says the most effective way to witness in India is through drama because the people there respond to such presentations. "People will come out for a drama when oftentimes they would not attend a [formal or typical] church service," Burgett says. There is still a lot of work to be done. "Most of these are Hindus [who] have never heard the Gospel before," he says, "and here we are with a great opportunity to reach out in a time when ... we've had people tell us we should not go. This is a perfect time to go. God's opened the doors here, and we're excited about that." (AgapePress, 27 December)

* CHRISTIANS KILLED IN AMBON (INDONESIA) - Gunmen shot dead nine Christians in Indonesia's eastern Ambon city on 19 December. Police spokesman Saleh Saaf said security authorities were trying to calm sectarian tensions in places such as Ambon in the Moluccas islands, where gunmen armed with automatic rifles killed the nine Christians traveling in a boat just after dawn. ``Based on our intelligence reports, the possibility is wide open that unrest provoked by certain groups or outsiders could occur during the Christmas period,'' Saaf told Reuters. Saaf declined to elaborate on what the intelligence reports showed or name the outside groups, but Christians have recently accused Muslim militants of the Laskar Jihad organization of stirring up trouble in Central Sulawesi province. (Reuters, 19 December)

* KAZAKHSTAN: BAPTIST FINED FOR NOT REGISTERING - Pavel Leonov, leader of the Baptist church in the town of Ayaguz in Eastern Kazakhstan region has been fined for refusing to register his church with the authorities. A 3 December statement from local Baptists, received by Keston News Service, reported that he was found guilty by the Ayaguz district court on 14 November under Article 362 part 1 of the criminal code and fined 25 financial units - 19,375 tenge (130 US dollars or 90 British pounds). (ChristianNewsToday.com)

* SWAZI BID TO FIGHT AIDS – (Mbabane) The Swazi royal family has brought back the eldest daughter of King Mswati III to promote traditional chastity vows that could help the country fight Aids. Princess Sikhanyiso Dlamini, (14) who attends school in Britain, said she came back to Swaziland for the holidays to encourage reluctant girls to take the Umchwasho chastity pledge for unmarried women under 23. "I am proud of the tradition and what it stands for, so I would like to encourage young maidens to take up the woollen tassels," the princess said. She showed her own tassels, saying she was concerned young maidens were refusing to take the vow. (The Citizen, 18 December)

* CHRISTIAN WEBSITES BEING ‘HIJACKED’ BY PORNOGRAPHERS – (Indianapolis) Christian ministries are inadvertently becoming purveyors of smut as pornographers "hijack" expired Web sites, either to lure unsuspecting visitors to pornographic sites or to earn a profit by selling the URL back to its original owner at an inflated price. The Indiana Baptist newspaper is among the latest victims of a scheme that has affected various ministries, non-profit organizations, government agencies and political leaders. Six months after the Indianapolis-based paper moved its content to a new state convention Web site, www.scbi.org, it gave up its rights to a former domain name. The day the old URL became available, pornography appeared on the old site.
Registered to a person supposedly in an obscure location in Russia, the bogus Baptist page now warns that it contains adult content and includes a note that the site is for sale.
Editor Chip Bayer said he considers it an indirect form of extortion... Internet pornographers, have long used innocuous-sounding URLs to attract unsuspecting Web surfers who wouldn't otherwise log onto their site. (Baptist News, 28 December)

* TEEN INTERNET PORN STUDY - A study that says a majority of teens surveyed have accidentally come across pornography on the Internet has sparked disagreement between an adult entertainment trade association and a conservative media watchdog group. The Kaiser Family Foundation study shows that 70 percent of teens surveyed have unintentionally encountered pornography on the Web. The report titled, "Generation Rx.com: How Young People Use the Internet for Health Information," also found that the teens surveyed believe that pornography has a major impact. Patrick McGrath, director of media relations for Morality in Media, said the study "underlines the importance of the necessity of obscenity enforcement in all media." But Bill Lyon, executive director for The Free Speech Foundation, the trade association for the adult entertainment industry, said that there is nothing wrong with using obscenity laws to punish those who are producing truly obscene material such as child pornography, but "none of our members are producing anything that would qualify as obscenity. It is all protected speech," Lyon said. (CNSNews;Maranatha, 17 December)

* `BIBLE ILLITERACY SETS UP BELIEVERS FOR DECEPTION’ – The lack of biblical literacy in America is at epidemic levels, says Ron Rhodes, president of Reasoning from the Scriptures Ministries. And when he talks about the lack of Bible reading among Americans, he is not talking about the population in general - he is talking about people who call themselves born-again Christians. In an interview with Assist News Service, Rhodes quotes a recent poll, which indicates that 35% of born-again Christians do not read the Bible at all. In addition, Rhodes indicates that among those who say they read the Bible, the vast majority only read it during the one hour they attend church each Sunday morning. Rhodes says such statistics make it more than obvious why many Christians are easy prey for spiritual deception. The level of biblical illiteracy among Christians may be one reason why many believers hesitate to stand for Godly values on the public scene. (Assist News Service / AgapePress, 25/26 December)

* ‘BIBLES HOT SELLERS’ SINCE SEPTEMBER 11 – According to a report in the Washington Post, the specialty Bible, aimed at "those who hurt," has been a big seller this post-Sept. 11 Christmas season, along with books that seek to answer difficult questions, such as: "How can I make sense of God's actions?" and "I feel like God has abandoned me. What should I do?". Bryan Eckardt, store manager of Family Christian Store in a southern suburb of Chicago, says "We've seen a rise of interest in consolation books,". "It's mostly people who want to give gifts to people who are questioning things. It's a chance to offer them a solution to life." Across the country, Bible sales are way up this holiday season, spiking immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and continuing even now as people attempt to cope with more upheaval. (Washington Post, 25 December)

* ‘MALAYSIAN MUSLIM CULT’S JIHAD’ – (Kuala Lumpur) Malaysia's High Court found 19 members of a little-known Muslim sect guilty on 27 December of armed rebellion to set up an Islamic state. The men could now be sentenced to hang. The leader of the Al-Ma'unah cult, Mohamed Amin Razali, and his followers were captured after a shootout in the jungle just weeks after the gang pulled off arms heists at two army camps in the middle of last year. Leaders of the sect, which began under the guise of a martial arts group, said its mission was to fight on behalf of suppressed Muslims, and convinced followers they possessed mystical powers that would protect them in battle, according to Reuters’ report. ``I hearby find the accused guilty of waging war against the government to set up an Islamic state through violent means under the name of Islamic jihad (holy war),'' said High Court Judge Zulkefli Ahmad Makinudin. (Reuters)

* POTTER BOOKS BURNED – (Alamogordo, New Mexico) As hundreds protested nearby, a church group burned Harry Potter and other books. Jack Brock, the Christ Community Church founder and pastor, said the books, burned on 30 December, were "a masterpiece of satanic deception." "These books teach children how they can get into witchcraft and become a witch, wizard or warlock," Brock said. Members sang "Amazing Grace" as they threw Potter books, plus some other books and magazines, into the fire. Across the street, protesters chanting "Stop burning books" stretched in a line a quarter of a mile long. Brock told the congregation that he viewed the attention the church received as a blessing. "There are those that are doing their best to make us look bad." Brock said. "But because of this, I've been able to preach the gospel around the world." A letter to the Alamogordo Daily News inviting the community to attend the fire sparked debate in the town of 36,000. (CNN.com, 31 December)

CFT and CHRISTIAN NEWS PRAYS THAT YOU WILL HAVE A CHRIST-FILLED NEW YEAR!