* JUST A THOUGHT - Fairly or unfairly, life doesn't grant us the luxury of being off our guard. What we decide in a matter of minutes, or even seconds, may be scrutinised by others for years to come.
(24 September 2009, By Fano Sibisi, www.cft.org.za) (to index)

* NATIONWIDE LIFE CHAINS - Every 2 minutes of every working day, a pre-born baby is murdered in South Africa. Over 900 000 babies have been legally killed through abortion in South Africa, since 1 February 1997. There are many women facing a crisis pregnancy in your city. They need to be reached and helped. Many women's lives are being wrecked by the devastating physical and psychological consequences of abortion.

On Sunday, the 4th of October is International Life Chain Sunday. God's Word commands us: "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves." (Proverbs 31:8).

The blood of innocent pre-born babies, killed by abortion, is polluting our land (Psalm 106:37-38).

Participate in a Life Chain - a Pro-life placard protest and time of intercession asking God to have mercy on South Africa.

"If My people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land" 2 Chronicles 7:14

This is a crucial time to speak up for the right to life of pre-born babies - as the president has indicated that he is open regarding scrapping the abortion legislation.It is vital that Christians throughout South Africa mobilise for life.

Inform your friends and congregation and join a Life Chain in your city on Sunday 4 October. Lives are at stake. Please help motivate and mobilise you congregation to participate. There are 7 Life Chains taking place nationwide. (See below for details.)

"Rescue those who are led away to death; hold back those staggering towards slaughter." Proverbs 24:11

Through the Life Chain we pray that the Lord will:

• Bring conviction of sin to those who have worked to legalise this slaughter of the innocent;
• Persuade abortionists to repent from this evil;
• Comfort mothers who are going through a crisis pregnancy by showing that many Christians do care;
• Encourage medical personnel to have no part in the killing of pre-born babies;
• Save the lives of many pre-born babies who are scheduled for abortions.

Cape Town: Sunday, 4 October, 2:00 - 4:00pm. Buitengracht Street, near entrance to Waterfront. Contact: Africa Christian Action: 021 -689 4480 or info@christianaction.org.za
Newcastle: Saturday, 17 October. Contact Daniel van Rooyen: 083 632 5615 or daniel.vanrooyen@lanxess.com.
Durban: Sunday, 4 October, 2:00 - 4:00pm. Umgeni Rd. Contact Mr Bruno Hlongwane 082 417 6646
Pietermaritzburg: Saturday, 3 October, 10:30. Pro-life march - starting at Liberty Square and proceeding over Church Street to Pietermaritz Street, up to Chapel Steet, then down Langilibalele Road to the City Hall. Contact: Guy Solomon, 033 - 569 0088 or morthill@africa.com
East London: Sunday, 4 October, 2 pm. Meet in Cheltenham Rd, in front of Clarendon Junior School. Contact Frans 082 774 6649 or Judy 043 726 9900, jvan@africa.com
Port Elizabeth: Sunday, 4 Ocotober, 12:00 - 14:00. Langehoven Drive, btw Cape Road and Worraker Street - Contact: Peter Morkel, 072 621 2444 or daphne.morkel@gmail.com.
Joburg: Saturday, 7 November. Contact the Biblical Christian Network: bibcnet@gmail.com or 083 359 5093.
(25 Sept 2009, Africa Christian Action) (to index)

* RELIGION IN SCHOOLS CHALLENGED AS UNCONSTITUTIONAL - The Sceptics South Africa organisation is challenging what it sees as the ‘unconstitutional’ conduct of schools who practise religion during school time, according to ‘Rapport’. Its chairperson, George Claassen, said his organisation had started monitoring schools and planned to lay criminal charges against ‘offenders’. Headmasters and education organisations reacted sharply to the move, arguing that the association was misinterpreting the Constitution and government policy.

According to the report, Claassen claimed it was unacceptable that Laerskool Stellenbosch described itself officially as a school with a ‘Christian character’ where ‘Christian values’ were taught. Rassie Malherbe, constitutional law expert of the University of Johannesburg, said the Constitution stipulated that religion could not be enforced. ‘But you cannot enforce the absence of religion either,’ he added.

According to Malherbe, any policy on religion was subordinate to the constitutional protection of freedom of religion. Former Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson held in 1990 that the government should create space for people to practise their religion freely. This included public schools, Malherbe said.
(20 September, Rapport)
The Burger newspaper reported: The development was described as ‘absolutely absurd’ by the Federation of Governing Bodies of SA Schools (Fedsas) chairperson Paul Colditz. He said the Schools Act dictated that schools should have a vision statement containing certain convictions.

The act, which was signed by President Jacob Zuma last week, requires that publication, games and films first be submitted to the Firms and Publications Board to be classified before they can be distributed or published to see if they contain, among other things, explicit sexual conduct which violates or shows disrespect for the right to human dignity, or have content which incites violence, includes propaganda for war or advocates hatred.
The act also allows for the board to ban any material which contains child pornography, incest, rape and bestiality, and compels any person aware of the publication of child pornography to report it to the police.

While the act has caused a stir in the media industry, with the Freedom of Expression Institution calling it a "grave intrusion into freedom of expression", child advocacy groups said yesterday that the legislation would help combat the proliferation of child pornography.
Childline KZN director Linda Naidoo said children were becoming increasingly sexually aware because of their exposure to pornography.
"It is a major milestone that this act has been signed into law in such a short space of time."
"It is very important because children are so exposed to pornography that they have become desensitised and they are becoming more sexually aware."
"A study we conducted in 2002 showed that 88 percent of adolescents were exposed to pornography and that number must have increased by now."

She added that exposure to pornography led to children sexually abusing each other.
"Pornography is a facilitating factor which leads to children abusing each other and adult offenders use pornography to get children to believe that sexual acts between an adult and child are normal."

Germaine Horowitz, project manager of Kidz Clinic KZN, an organisation that counsel abused children, also welcomed the act.
Horowitz said surveys conducted at two KZN schools in August this year showed that children under the age of 13 years were watching pornographic movies with older children and were actively downloading and distributing pornographic images on the internet. She added that some children had admitted to acting out scenes after viewing pornographic films and that they knew of children who were distributing nude pictures of themselves.

Jackie Branfield, founder of Operation Bobbi Brar, a support group for child abuse victims, said: "My faith in humanity has been restore. I believe in freedom of expression but people must understand how pornography impacts on children.

"It (the act) is a step in the right direction to healing the nation."

Aspects of the act have, however, alarmed media practitioners.

While welcoming moves to stamp out the sexual abuse of children and child pornography, they believe the act has been worded in a way that will force journalists to name whistleblowers and it could lead to pre-publication censorship.

Among other things, journalists could be fined or jailed, or both, for publishing any unapproved material subsequently deemed to have resulted in incitement or to have degraded any person.
Last week, Rymond Louw, deputy chairman of the Media Institution of Southern Africa, said the act would usher in a range of problems for the media.
(September 7, The Mercury) (to index)

* COPTIC MOURNERS PROTEST ISLAMIC ATTACKS IN EGYPT - A funeral for a Coptic Christian gruesomely killed on a village street north of Cairo by a Muslim assailant last week turned into a protest by hundreds of demonstrators in Egypt. Galal Nasr el-Dardiri, 35, attacked 63-year-old Abdu Georgy in front of the victim's shop in Behnay village the afternoon of Sept. 16, according to research by a local journalist. Other Copts watched in horror as El-Dardiri stabbed Georgy five times in the back, according to interviews by Gamal Gerges, a reporter for newspaper Al-Youm al-Sabeh.
 
As Georgy fell to the ground, El-Dardiri took his knife and stabbed him four times in the stomach. He then disemboweled him, slit his throat and began sawing off his head, according to Gerges. The Rev. Stephanos Aazer, a Coptic priest who knew Georgy and saw photographs of his mutilated body, said the victim's head was attached to the body by a small piece of flesh.
 
After killing Georgy, El-Dardiri got on a motorcycle and rode 30 minutes to another town, where he found Coptic shopkeeper Boils Eid Messiha, 40, and stabbed him twice in the stomach, according to Gerges. El-Dardiri immediately left the scene, went to nearby Mit Afif and allegedly attacked Hany Barsom Soliman. Soliman, a Copt in his mid-20s, managed to fight him off.
 
Messiha was taken to a hospital where he has been operated on at least five times. He remained in intensive care at press time. Soliman suffered lacerations to his arms but was otherwise unharmed.
 
On Thursday afternoon (Sept. 17), about 1,000 people gathered at Georgy's funeral to protest the killing and assaults on Coptic Christians. Protestors chanted that Georgy's "blood was not [spilled] in vain" as they carried signs that read, "Where are you, government? The terrorists are going to kill us."
 
Aazer and several other priests participated in the demonstration. Aazer, of the Behnay area, confirmed that police had been monitoring local Copts and even tracking telephone conversations of clergy.
 
El-Dardiri was arrested on Thursday (Sept. 17) in Cairo and has been charged with murder. It was unclear when he would appear in court.
 
Ibrahim Habib, chairman of United Copts Great Britain, said Egypt has encouraged the type of "radicalization" that has led to such attacks.
(24 September, CDN) (to index)

* ABORTION SUPPORT DECLINES IN USA -The number of Americans expressing support for abortion is clearly declining, leaving the nation now evenly divided on the issue, according to results from a "Pew survey".

The survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds that finds that the abortion debate has receded in importance among liberals while opposition to abortion has grown more firm among conservatives.

From the Pew release:
In Pew Research Center polls in 2007 and 2008, supporters of legal abortion clearly outnumbered opponents. Now Americans are evenly divided on the question, and there have been modest increases in the numbers who favor reducing abortions or making them harder to obtain.

Other notable findings from the survey, which was conducted from Aug. 11 to 27 among a total of 4,013 adults:

One of the largest declines in support for legal abortion has occurred among white, non-Hispanic Catholics who attend Mass at least weekly. Substantial change has also occurred among Democratic men (with support for legal abortion down nine points) but not among Democratic women.

Even as the public expresses support for finding a middle ground on abortion, most Americans are quite certain that their own position on abortion is the right one, with only one-quarter saying they never wonder about their views on the issue.

Furthermore, many people on both sides of the issue say that the opposite point of view on abortion is not a "respectable" opinion for someone to hold.

Overall, roughly three in ten Americans think that President Barack Obama will handle the abortion issue about right, while four in ten are unaware of his position on the issue. About two in ten worry that Obama will go too far in supporting abortion rights.
(1 October, Baltimore Sun) (to index)

* NINE CHINESE LEADERS KIDNAPPED - SHANXI, China, On Friday, September 25, nine Fushan Church leaders, including Pastor Yang Rongli, were kidnapped by Shanxi PSB officers while traveling to Beijing to petition the central government for justice concerning the local authorities' brutal attack on 13 September. They were illegally seized without warrant, and have not been heard from since Friday night. After the arrests, local authorities forcibly confiscated all computers, TVs and other church-owned valuables, calling them "illegal materials." Remaining church leaders and active members were placed under house arrest and are now under constant surveillance.

On September 26, the central government stationed state military police inside the main Fushan Church in Linfen city, where 5,000 of the 50,000-member Linfen House Church network worship together weekly, to prevent them from entering the building or holding services. Military police now guard the building and the surrounding areas around the clock.

ChinaAid has since learned that the central government was and is directly responsible for the escalating crackdown campaign against the Linfen Church. Ironically twisting the facts, the Beijing PSB has categorized the Linfen Church incident as a "violent uprising" and resolved to use military force to subdue the alleged "unrest." Reliable government sources informed ChinaAid that a notice was sent to all relevant government agencies over the weekend, ordering them to be prepared to use military force to crackdown on the churches throughout China, in the same way the recent violent incident in Xinjiang was suppressed. They are calling the maneuver the "Xinjiang Model, " a method that resulted in the deaths of several hundred people in Xinjiang in August.

"To have military police occupy a peaceful church is an unprecedented tragic development in 60 years of PRC history, which itself shows the reality of today's situation regarding religious freedom in China," ChinaAid President Bob Fu stated. "The Chinese government has no reason to be fearful of the peaceful Christian church. We call upon the international community to continue to urge the Chinese government to respect Chinese citizens' religious freedom and to avoid shedding innocent blood."
(29 September, Christiannewswire) (to index)