| Christian News 15 March 2002
* UPDATE ON PINK AGENDA (South Africa) - The authors of
"The Pink..." have until 23 March to explain why they need to lodge an appeal
against the ruling, which almost bans their book. In an interview with Christine
McCafferty she told Christian News that the Film and Publications Board only gazetted
their ruling on 22 February and she and co-author Dr Peter Hammond now have more time to
put forward their objection. Christine said that besides the huge media debate in South
Africa there has also been an "incredible response" from the USA. Various
publications in America have discussed the controversy and Christian organisations have
been communicating their concern about the issue. Christine has asked for prayer support.
* 'FRANCE RESTRICTING RELIGIOUS FREEDOM' - One of Europe's oldest democracies is accused of violating
religious freedoms. Eight months ago, the French National Assembly adopted an anti-cult
law to battle the growing influence of religious movements. A Sunday morning church
service in Mulhouse, France where thousands to worship, pray and hear from God is a
familiar scene repeated weekly across the country and around the world. But with the
constitution stating: "France shall respect all beliefs" - evangelical churches
like this one, are under suspicion, according to CBN News. Such scenes of absolute
devotion to God are increasingly viewed as fanatical, irrational, or even by some as a
cult. "Now in France, it is very difficult to preach the Gospel," said
Peterschmitt, who is pastor of the Full Gospel Mission Church. French security authorities
monitor his services, mingling among the crowd. The French secret police have increased
their scrutiny on minority groups across France. The Baptists, Evangelicals, and
Protestants are amongst those reporting growing intolerance and discrimination. Joel
Thorton of the European Center for Law and Justice said, "in my opinion, the goal of
this law is the completion of the French revolution - the eradication of religion in the
life of the public in France and the opening of the door for a purely secular
society." Thorton fears the anti-cult law could even criminalize evangelism by
deeming it an exercise in "serious and repeated pressure."... "If something
is not done in France you are going to see this law move across Europe I believe and
you'll see a Europe that is united in its hostility to religion," said Pastor Vince
Easterman, of an Evangelical church in Paris. For the full article: www.cbn.com/CBNNEWS/CWN/030102FranceCults.asp
(CBN News, 1 March)
* REVIEW OF SA CHILD CARE ACT - Excerpts
from Submission by Africa Christian Action to The Discussion Paper on the Review
of the Child Care Act Overview and Philosophy: "We have no doubt that
parts of the Child Care Act urgently need to be revised... There are several specific
proposals for the Child Care Act that we reject completely. These include: 1.Explicitly
excluding pre-born children from protection. 2.Effectively outlawing reasonable
corporal punishment as a form of chastisement. 3.Explicitly guaranteeing the rights
of all children to confidentially access contraception. 4.Explicitly guaranteeing
the rights of all pregnant girls to confidential abortion. 5.The recommended
universal child care grant. 6.The easy access to parental rights (without any
explanation of how relationship break-up between unmarried "parents" will be
handled), and promotion of a wide variety of "families", which provide little
protection to children.
... We are concerned that laws designed to allow intervention in dysfunctional families
can be used to persecute otherwise stable and functional families. For example, while the
intention of not allowing reasonable parental chastisement as a legal defence against an
assault charge may be to reduce child abuse, the results would include use of this law by
embittered divorcees to gain custody from responsible ex-spouses who were following
Biblical patterns for reasonable discipline...". Submissions can be
made until 31 March to: The Secretary (attention Mr. GO Hollamby / Ms Louisa Stuurman)
South African Law Commission, Private Bag X 668, Pretoria, 0001; Fax 012 320 0936; lawcom@salawcom.org.za
For more information contact: Jeanine McGill , (021) 689 4481; acaction@intekom.co.za
* HUMAN RIGHTS DAY NOTICE - 21 MARCH - Processions and
actions in support of the right to life of unborn babies are to be held at various places
throughout South Africa on Human Rights Day, Thursday, 21 March. You are welcome to take
part. In KZN the planned procession will commence at 13:30 from Addington Hospital,
Durban. (CFTNews)
* 'FAMILY PLANNING DOESN'T REDUCE TEEN PREGNANCY' -
(UK) Family planning services may have no positive impact on reducing the rate of
pregnancy or abortion among schoolgirls, research suggests. In fact, they might actually
have the reverse effect. A government advisory group on teenage pregnancies recommended
last year that children wanting to have sex before the age of 16 should be able to get
contraception at school. But a 14-year study into underage pregnancy has questioned the
effectiveness of such a policy. Lead researcher Dr David Paton, of Nottingham University
Business School, said: "We found that as you increase access to family planning
services pregnancy rates for this group either do not change or there is some evidence
they go up. They certainly don't decrease which is what the government wants. It seems
family planning seems to encourage more people to have sex, which, teamed with a high
contraceptive failure rate can cancel out any gain." (BBC, 4 March)
* IGNORANT OF DANGER - (UK) The Government is
expected shortly to launch a sex education campaign in reaction to alarming figures for
the growth in sexually transmitted disease. However previous attempts to educate the young
and sexually active against dangerous practice have been sadly counter-productive. Indeed
sex education in this country has progressed rather like a seduction. Modest and
undemanding at first, it was content merely to teach the facts about human reproduction
and to answer questions. Then it seemed to become inflamed by its own material and has
become increasingly lewd, leering and graphic... "We have the highest illegitimacy
rate in Europe. Abortions on young girls are in the thousands and now, there is a real,
and not a prophesied, epidemic of sexually transmitted disease (STD)", writes Lynette
Burrows in Daily Telegraph. According to her, young people's biggest problem at the moment
is that they are almost completely ignorant of the risks of casual sex, having been
reassured since primary school that science can make it safe. (Daily Telegraph, 26
February)
* 5 HEROIN PATIENTS WEEKLY AT PTA HOSPITAL - (South
Africa) Every week the Pretoria Academic Hospital (PAH) treats an average of 5 to 6
outpatients who are addicted to heroin. Spokesman ms Amelia Lodi says that 71 men and 124
women were admitted to the hospital casualty section during January and February for drug
overdoses. According to a recent article in "Beeld" on the Medical Research
Council's latest report on drug and alcohol abuse in SA, it appears that heroin use has
increased 5 to 10 times during the past 5 years. Dr Thomas Kluyts of PAH says heroin is a
drug which causes acute respiratory failure if taken in overdose, with liquid building up
in the lungs and the person "drowning". (Beeld, 8 March)
* HIV REVENGE REVEALED - (Accra) A Ghanaian woman who
died of Aids during the last week of February has thrown her hometown in a tizz by
claiming on her deathbed that she had infected 39 men, a state-owned daily said on 28
February. The Ghanaian Times said 28-year-old Atswei Pat had rocked the fishing town of
Teshie, near the capital Accra, with her dying confession. An unidentified relative said
Pat had been diagnosed with HIV, the virus that can lead to Aids, nine years ago. The
relative said Pat, who was reportedly "offended" by a man, decided to stage a
"massive revenge". She started bleaching her skin to attract more men and
carelessly going to bed with virtually every man who proposed love to her. "The harm
caused by Pat in the vicinity will be too much to quantify because of the promiscuous
lifestyle of the people in our area," the relative added. (Sapa-AFP, 28 February)
* 'COLUMBINE VICTIM'S DEATH STARTS POSITIVE CHAIN
REACTION' - The father of one of the Columbine victims says his daughter's death shows
how tragedy can be used for good. Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Joy Scott, one of
the young teens gunned down in the Columbine High School tragedy, speaks on "A Call
to Compassionate Revolution". He serves on a board called the National Curriculum for
Bibles in Schools. "We have put the Bible back in the high schools in 157 districts
in the last two years in this nation, on campus, during school hours," Scott said to
the applauding audience. "And I honestly believe with all my heart that if one woman
can remove it from school like Madeline [Murray] O'Hare did, one father can help bring it
back again. That's one of my missions in life." Scott explains. "I can tell you
story after story of lives that have been impacted. We have seen six young men in the last
two years that came to us after they had their lives changed by Rachel's story, and [the
young men] said they had already prepared bombs or bought guns and were planning to outdo
what Eric and Dylan did in their schools. And Rachel's story has stopped at least those
six horrible tragedies from occurring that we know of." Scott says: "...my
daughter's life had a huge impact, while she was alive, on a handful of people - but after
her death, it extended to literally millions of people." (AgapePress, 25 February)
* BIBLE IN GULLAH LANGUAGE - (Waxhaw, NC) A Bible
translation into Gullah, a mixture of English and West African languages, is changing the
language image. Emory Campbell, a Sea Islander and former director of the Penn Center, the
first school for freed slaves in the south of the US says, "Gullah was thought to be
a broken language, but Bible translation brought respect to the language". Beginning
in the late 1600s, Africans were brought as slaves to the Southeast coast of America,
which includes the Sea Islands, to work on plantations. An estimated 250,000 Sea Islanders
live along the Atlantic seacoast, from the Carolinas to Northeastern Florida. The Sea
Islanders who speak Gullah had attempted to write their language and found it difficult.
So in 1979 they invited Claude and Pat Sharpe of Wycliffe Bible Translators to help them
write Gullah and to translate the Bible into their language. A team of Sea Islanders
including Ardell Greene currently is reviewing the translated New Testament. John 3:16 in
Gullah reads: "Cause God lobe all de people een de wol so much dat e gii we e
onliest Son. God sen we um so dat ebrybody wa bleebe on um ain gwine ded. Dey gwine libe
fa true faeba mo." (The Charlotte World - North Carolina, March 2002)
* HUMAN EMBRYO EXPERIMENTS OK'd IN UK - Licences to
experiment on human embryos for purposes other than the investigation of infertility have
been granted in the UK for the first time. A group at Edinburgh University looking for a
treatment for Parkinson's Disease and a team at Guy's Hospital in London, investigating
neural disorders, infertility and miscarriages, have had their applications approved. This
follows a House of Lords report, end February, that agreed that controversial stem cell
research should go ahead. The applications approved by the Human Fertilisation and
Embryology Authority (HFEA) are for basic research to develop techniques to handle
embryonic material. The clinics will only produce stem cell "lines" from
"spare" embryos created for IVF treatment, according to the HFEA. In the longer
term, researchers may wish to create human embryo clones to understand how they develop.
The decision by the House of Lords select committee allows research to start on both adult
and embryo stem cells. Anti-abortion campaigners believe equally effective treatments
could be developed using adult cells. (BBC, 1 March)
* LATE-TERM ABORTIONS BY SOUTH AFRICAN NURSE -A nurse
faces being struck off the nursing roll in South Africa after she admitted to performing
illegal, late-term abortions. South Africa's nursing council found 62-year-old Betty Norah
Mawela guilty of scandalous conduct and recommended that she be struck off after the nurse
testified that she had performed abortions up to the 34th week of pregnancy at a women's
clinic in Pretoria. Ms Mawela said: "At times the foetuses lay in the bucket, crying
for up to half an hour before drowning. We were told to tie the foetuses in plastic bags
and put them in the fridge. At times I took some of the larger foetuses from the buckets,
wrapped them in a towel and put them at the heater. Then they stayed alive for up to two
hours." Hasina Subedar, registrar of the Nursing Council, said Mawela's case would be
referred to the police and the Council of Health Professions would be notified. (News24, 8
March)
* CFT EUROPE ON THE SCENE : NETHERLANDS - A bus,
"de Griezelbus", holding shows for children, based on creepy horror stories
about death, monsters and the occult, has been touring the Netherlands. On 6 March a few
CFT members took their stand outside a building where such a show was held. They handed
out flyers from "Bijbel & Onderwijs" warning against the
"Griezelbus", as well as a Gospel booklet "Een Brief voor jou". They
were met with a variety of reactions. A teacher from a Christian school who was interested
in reading the pamphlet, felt forbidding children to watch the show was 'going too far'. A
lady from a Catholic school said she had not been equipped to warn the children in time,
mentioning that all she could do then was pray for the children. The mother of a little
girl, who had not gone to the show, thanked CFT for the warning. One of the show's
organisers requested CFT to stop handing out flyers, complaining that the flyers looked
too similar to the Griezelbus' logo, and could be confusing. Since she could not dismiss
the CFT members, who had police permission to hand out the flyers, she threatened to
accuse them of Trademark fraud. : GERMANY - CFT is been holding a number of
demonstrations against the musical "God-spell" held in churches. The musical had
been advertised and debated in newspapers, with Christians taking action in opposing it.
During a demonstration in Lüneburg CFT was forbidden to enter the church grounds. The
police had however showed the demonstrators where to stand on a sidewalk. CFT put up
posters saying "This is Blasphemy" and sang Gospel songs telling of Jesus as we
know Him. Many people coming to the church for the musical, eagerly took CFT's flyers,
some even coming out of the church to get hold of one. (Christians for Truth - Netherlands
& Germany)
* 'AD ZAPPER' REPLACE TV ADS - A Californian
company is test marketing a new product that replaces television ads with devotionals. The
Silicon Valley-based company JAGTEC has developed a product known as the "Ad
Zapper." It is a cable box-sized device that connects to a household television set
and automatically detects ads in live programming, replacing them with pre-recorded video
devotionals provided by Christian television networks and ministries. Dr. George Perreault
helped develop the Ad Zapper, and says the product will be a valuable tool for parents.
"What our device has is a universal remote control plus a bunch of other features and
jacks that allow you to switch to basically anything you want to during these
commercials," he says. "For example, you can automatically switch to watching a
DVD, playing a video game, or even listening to your favorite radio station."
(AgapePress, 5 March)
* ON A LIGHTER NOTE - A college physics professor
was explaining a particularly complicated concept to his class when a pre-med student
interrupted him. "Why do we have to learn this stuff?" one young man blurted
out. "To save lives," the professor responded before continuing the lecture. A
few minutes later the student spoke up again. "So how does physics save lives?"
The professor stared at the student for a long time without saying a word. Finally the
professor continued. "Physics saves lives," he said, "because it keeps
certain people out of medical school."(Daily Chuckle) |
