Southern Africa:

• Differing views about Wilkinson speech at SACLA
• "Ancestors should not be forgotten"

* DIFFERING VIEWS ABOUT WILKINSON SPEECH AT SACLA – The official SACLA 2 online newspaper reported that there was strong opposition to Dr Bruce Wilkinson’s main plenary presentation: "One man's meat is another man's poison." This seems to be the case with Dr Bruce Wilkinson's talk on Wednesday morning. People were offended by what he said concerning HIV/AIDS, apartheid and the Holy Spirit. The offended group claims that Bruce accused Africans of suffering with HIV/AIDS because they engage in sexual relationships while they are still young. Mandla Nxele from Queenstown said "Bruce has to apologise for Americanising African history. I felt like he was saying blacks suffer because of their immoral sexual behaviour and that cannot be right." Concerning apartheid, Mandla said, "we cannot just let it go if he was speaking to the black people. Apartheid destroyed us and the wounds are still there. The evidence is too strong to forget. Yes, we must forgive but forgetting may take us back to where we came from." Mandla did not feel there was anything offensive about what he said concerning the Holy Spirit. People who felt like Mandla approached the SACLA leadership and shared their feelings. In the evening, Dr Michael Cassidy, offered an explanation to the assembly clarifying Bruce's talk. However, yesterday morning another group, now offended by the 'apology' emerged. They said Cassidy should not have apologised to people who were offended by the Word of God and the facts about HIV/AIDS. Siegfried Ngubane from Cape Town said Bruce has been one of the speakers who have explained the Bible to them. "Bruce was right when he said that it is time we stop dwelling in the past, which is what many speakers have been doing. Yes, apartheid affected us, but does that mean we must suffer forever? He was also correct in saying that many people are infected because of moral decay. Yes, we have so many innocent victims, but it is a fact that AIDS spreads because of people's misbehaviour. I think people were offended by the Word and if this was the case then we do not need to apologise." (`Delegates Express Strong Views on Wilkinson Plenary’, by Nhlanhla Mchunu, SACLA News, Issue 7, 11 July 2003) (to index)

* "ANCESTORS SHOULD NOT BE FORGOTTEN" - According to the Mail and Guardian newspaper South Africa's church leaders would grapple this week with ways to bring "African customs and culture into worship" when they meet in Pretoria for the second South African Christian Leadership Assembly (Sacla). The first Sacla, held in 1979, united Christian leaders in developing a strategy against apartheid. This year's conference will deal with seven threats to South Africans: HIV/Aids, violence, crime, racism, poverty and unemployment, sexism, and the family in crisis. The Mail & Guardian understands that a key debating point will be the Africanisation of the church. Charismatic churches are said to be strongly against the concept, while mainstream denominations are more willing to explore and embrace Africanisation. "The church needs to re-evaluate its value system and identify how African values can be incorporated into Christianity," said Bishop Mvume Dandala, presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. "Eurocentric interpretations of Christianity have alienated so many of our country's people. We should not be ashamed of bringing our culture into our faith. African values encourage society to develop a structure, he says. "If people are separated from their value systems, they behave in un-social ways. I want the church to investigate these structures and to see how this social structure can fit into the church," he said. Dandala said ancestors have a place in Christianity. "Western norms distorted the honouring of ancestors into ancestor worship," he said. "They decided that ancestor worship was a heathen practice that had to be eradicated. But ancestors are a very important part of African culture. No generation lives for itself. People have rituals to keep the ancestors' memory alive." He said this should not be condemned by the church. (Mail and Guardian Online, 8 July 2003) (to index)

International:

• US International pro-life strategy repealed
• Abortion ship sails off Poland for last time
• Religious US / European divide
• Church angered by Yoga in school
• Albania responds to Gospel
• "Killing of Jews mandatory"
• Fears of violence against Christians in Indian census
• Robertson defends Liberian leader

* US INTERNATIONAL PRO-LIFE STRATEGY REPEALED - The U.S. Senate has approved an amendment to repeal a Bush administration-backed policy prohibiting federal funding of international organizations that perform or promote abortion. Opponents of the pro-life Mexico City policy turned back an attempt to table the amendment in a 53-43 vote July 9, then gained passage of the measure on a voice vote. The amendment was added to the authorization bill for the State Department. Pro-life advocates are optimistic that the House of Representatives will not include such an amendment in its State Department authorization bill. Assuming the House version does not include the amendment, pro-lifers also are hopeful the conference committee appointed to work out differences in the two bills will drop the amendment from the final bill. President Bush reinstituted the Mexico City policy promptly after taking office in 2001. President Clinton had rescinded the policy - which was established by President Reagan in 1984 - shortly after he moved into the White House in 1993. The policy, named after the site of the population conference where it was announced by the United States, bans government funds from going to international organizations that perform abortions or "actively promote abortion as a method of family planning." Abortions are permitted in cases of endangerment to the mother's life, as well as rape and incest. Promotion of abortion includes lobbying foreign governments to liberalize their abortion policies. (16 July, Baptist Press) (to index)

* ABORTION SHIP SAILS OFF POLAND FOR LAST TIME - The abortion ship Langenort sailed out to international waters early Friday for the third and last time with a group of Polish women. Following the trip, members of the crew said the converted tugboat will head back to their home port in the Netherlands. Women on Waves, the pro-abortion group that sponsors the abortion ship, said it is an effort to ``put abortion back on the agenda'' in Poland. "This is exactly what we wanted," says Wanda Nowicka, head of the Federation for Women and Family Planning, which invited the abortion ship to visit Poland. "We want the country to sit up and think about this issue and the consequences of denying women the right to abortion." Pro-life groups say the trip was a publicity stunt and an attempt to overturn Poland's largely pro-life laws. Laura Echevarria, the director of media relations for National Right to Life, told LifeNews.com, "We think it's terrible that they are using international waters to promote abortion and to violate the sovereignty of nations that oppose abortion." (Lifenews.com) (to index)

* RELIGIOUS US / EUROPEAN DIVIDE - The ideological clash between the United States and certain European countries over the war in Iraq and other foreign policy/cultural matters may have as much to do with a religious divide between those countries as anything else, experts in religion and public policy told CNSNews.com. While faith-based organizations play a significant role in American politics, the experts said, similar organizations in Europe are far less influential. The political influence of American faith-based groups also appears connected to the importance individual Americans place on religion. According to recent findings by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, sponsored by the Pew Research Center for the People the Press, 59 percent of Americans identified religion as an important part of their lives. In contrast, 11 percent of the French, 14 percent of Russians and 33 percent of Britons said religion was important to them. "Europe is decidedly a post-Christian society," said Dr. Richard Lessner, executive director of the Family Research Council's American Renewal Project. "Faith is far less important in the daily lives of Europeans. Their institutions are not rooted in a particular faith point-of-view. They are thoroughly secular societies, with a very different national history from the national history of America." (Crosswalk) (to index)

* CHURCH ANGERED BY YOGA IN SCHOOL - Croatia's powerful Catholic Church is angered by what it calls heretical plans to introduce optional yoga classes for the country's schoolteachers.
The Croatian council of bishops believe the yoga tuition is an underhand attempt to introduce Hinduist religious practices into Croatian schools. The bishops argue that teachers will pass on what they had learnt, to their pupils in class and have asked the government to withdraw the plans. (ABCnews, 16 July) (to index)

* ALBANIA RESPONDS TO GOSPEL - Thousands of people gave their hearts to Christ in Albania recently. The Luis Palau Evangelistic Association's Next Generation Alliance sent evangelists into the region. Spokesman Tim Robnett says evangelistic meetings focused on politicians, prison inmates, teachers and others. "We had a saturation evangelism ministry in seven different cities. They held almost 100 events. This went on for about 10 days. Over 4,000 people made decisions for Christ." According to Robnett the small Albanian evangelical church desperately needs your prayers. "If there's 8,000 Christians and 4,000 new Christians, just the follow up itself has to be enormous -- just the number of people that need to be contacted, because we do always institute a process of follow-up. But, often, just the energy and the time demands to get it done is always challenging." (16 July, Mission Network News) (to index)

* "KILLING OF JEWS MANDATORY" - The killing of Jews is a mandatory religious obligation established by Islam's founder Muhammad, according to a Muslim academic who spoke on Palestinian Authority television. "Muhammad said in his Hadith: "The Hour [Day of Resurrection] will not arrive until you fight the Jews, [until a Jew will hide behind a rock or tree] and the rock and the tree will say: 'Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!'" said Hassan Khader, founder of the Al Quds Encyclopedia. Khader spoke during a lecture broadcast Sunday, on what he describes as the war of the Jews against Palestinian "trees." The program was monitored by Palestinian Media Watch, or PMW, an Israel-based group. PMW director Itamar Marcus says Khader's statement was one of many instances in recent years of Palestinian religious leaders teaching publicly that this Hadith – part of Islamic traditions attributed to Muhammad – is a current obligation of Islam. Marcus says these teachings challenge the common belief that the premise for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is over borders. "Palestinian religious and academic leaders publicly teach that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is part of Islam's irreconcilable religious war against the Jews," he says. "To justify this view," he adds, "Palestinians repeatedly cite Islamic sources to demand as religious doctrine, that Jews be hated, even demanding the killing of Jews as the will of Allah." Marcus says "the continued expression of this PA worldview is most ominous." "For by depicting redemption as dependent on Muslims' murder of Jews, the murder of Jews is being presented as mandatory religious obligation," he says. (15 July, Worldnetdaily) (to index)

* FEARS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST CHRISTIANS IN INDIAN CENSUS - Following a census taken of Muslim traders and homeowners in Gujarat, India, in February/March 2002, a horrific genocide of vulnerable Muslim men, women and children resulted in thousands being killed, and many thousands ending up in refugee camps. Now an Indian Christian leader believes that attempts to take a census of Christians in the troubled state could be the precursor to violence against the Christians. Dr. Joseph D'souza, president of the All India Christian Council, says his organization has been fighting all attempts to "survey" local Christians with court challenges, in a bid to stave off a massacre of believers. Dr. D'souza and his organization said they were alerted to the situation when the Gujarat government admitted that there had been some "informal" gathering of statistics of the Christian community. The Gujarat media reported that the Gujarat police had started a "discreet" survey of Christians in some parts of the state, filing information on the size of the families, their job profiles and sources of foreign funds. He said that survey asks for the name of the person, details of Christian institutions in the area; how many people converted in the village during the past year; how many new institutes have started in the past year; details about converted Christians in the village; and what are the reasons behind the conversions in the district. (Assist News Service) (to index)

* ROBERTSON DEFENDS LIBERIAN LEADER - Christian evangelist Pat Robertson, who recently accused the U.S. State Department of trying to destabilize the government of Liberia, is himself embroiled in controversy because of his financial interests in the country. Robertson said Monday on The 700 Club, broadcast from his Christian Broadcasting Network, that President Bush was "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels". "How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, 'You've got to step down,'" Robertson said. "It's one thing to say, we will give you money if you step down and we will give you troops if you step down, but just to order him to step down? He doesn't work for us." During his five-day, five-country African trip, Bush repeatedly called for Charles Taylor, recently indicted for war crimes, to quickly relinquish power. Speaking Wednesday in South Africa, Bush said he intended to "see to it that Mr. Taylor leaves office so there can be a peaceful transition in Liberia." Robertson is founder of the Christian Coalition and CEO of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), one of the world's largest television ministries. In 1999, a Robertson-owned company, Freedom Gold, reportedly made an $8 million investment in a Liberian gold mining venture under an agreement with Taylor's government. He also said his investments were intended to help pay for humanitarian and evangelical efforts in Liberia. (16 July, Maranatha Christian News Service) (to index)