* JUST A THOUGHT - Remove the profit motive from Valentine and the bottom line is how much true love there is in-between the Valentines.
(By Fano Sibisi, 9 February 2010, www.cft.org.za) (to index)

* LIFE-CHAINS HELD ACROSS SOUTH AFRICA - A number of Life-Chains were held across the country to commemorate the 13 years of abortion-on-demand which came into law on 1 February 1997. Estimates vary but the figure of 900,000 abortions, with Government legal protection, have been performed. One of the Life-Chains was held in Attridgeville, a first for a South African township.

Another Life Chain took place in Ballito.
Part of an article from The North Coast Courier said: "In the heat of Sunday midday on February 7, a large crowd of caring and dedicated folk gathered to highlight the rights of unborn children.
Before setting off to stand silently on the side of the roads, a short meeting was held. One of the speakers related that since abortions have been legal in SA, over nine hundred thousand legal abortions have been performed."
(CFT News, February 2010) (to index)

* PUSH FOR SHARIA LAW IN KENYA ALARMS CHRISTIANS - A constitutional battle to expand the scope of Islamic courts in Kenya threatens to ignite religious tensions at a time when authorities are on high alert against Muslim extremists with ties to Somalia.
Constitutional provisions for Islamic or Kadhis’ courts have existed in Kenya since 1963, with the courts serving the country’s coastal Muslim population in matters of personal status, marriage, divorce, or inheritance. Kenya’s secular High Court has jurisdiction over civil and criminal matters, and even a decision in the Islamic courts can be appealed at the High Court. The Islamic courts have functioned only in Kenya’s Coast Province, but in a hotly debated draft constitution, their jurisdiction would expand across the nation and their scope would increase. The proposed constitution has gathered enough momentum that 23 leaders of churches and Christian organizations released a statement on Feb. 1 asserting their opposition to any inclusion of such religious courts. "It is clear that the Muslim community is basically carving for itself an Islamic state within a state," the Kenyan church leaders stated. "This is a state with its own sharia [Islamic law]- compliant banking system; its own sharia-compliant insurance; its own Halaal [lawful in Islam] bureau of standards; and it is now pressing for its own judicial system."
(CBN ,11 February 2010) (to index)

The punishments came after a Shanxi province court last week sentenced five other leaders of the same church to up to seven years in prison for trying to protect the unregistered church from demolition, said ChinaAid, a US-based Christian rights group.

"To arbitrarily send five innocent citizens to labour camps is in direct violation of international human rights covenants," the head of ChinaAid, Bob Fu, said in a statement.

The statement said the case, in the city of Linfen, showed Chinese authorities were intent on suppressing religious freedom.

Up to 1,000 followers of the unregistered 60,000-member Fushan church in Linfen held a protest prayer meeting a day after police raided church buildings on September 13, the rights group said.

Following the protest, police began rounding up church leaders, it said.
"Education through labour" is a punishment meted out by police that does not require judicial procedures such as a trial. The punishment has long been criticised as arbitrary and susceptible to abuse. The government says China's official churches have 15 million Protestants and five million Catholics. But there are believed to be many millions more worshipping in "underground" or "family" churches, which refuse to submit to government regulation.
(MySinchew, 5 February 2010) (to index)

* HOME SCHOOLED CHILDREN SCORE HIGHER & SOCIALIZE WELL - One of the most persistent criticisms of home-schooling is the accusation that home-schoolers will not be able to fully participate in society because they lack "socialization." It's a challenge that reaches right to the heart of home-schooling, because if a child isn't properly socialized, how will that child be able to contribute to society?

Since the re-emergence of the home-school movement in the late 1970s, critics of home-schooling have perpetuated two myths. The first concerns the ability of parents to adequately teach their own children at home; the second is whether home-schooled children will be well-adjusted socially. Proving academic success is relatively straightforward. Today, it is accepted that home-schoolers, on average, outperform their public school peers. The most recent study, "Homeschool Progress Report 2009," conducted by Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute, surveyed more than 11,000 home-schooled students. It showed that the average home-schooler scored 37 percentile points higher on standardized achievement tests than the public school average.

The second myth, however, is more difficult to address because children who were home-schooled in appreciable numbers in the late 1980s and early 1990s are only now coming of age and in a position to demonstrate they can succeed as adults. Home-school families across the nation knew criticisms about adequate socialization were ill-founded — they had the evidence right in their own homes. In part to address this question from a research perspective, the Home School Legal Defense Association commissioned a study in 2003 titled "Homeschooling Grows Up," conducted by Mr. Ray, to discover how home-schoolers were faring as adults. The news was good for home-schooling. In all areas of life, from gaining employment, to being satisfied with their home-schooling, to participating in community activities, to voting, home-schoolers were more active and involved than their public school counterparts.

Until recently, "Homeschooling Grows Up" was the only study that addressed the socialization of home-schooled adults. Now we have a new longitudinal study titled "Fifteen Years Later: Home-Educated Canadian Adults" from the Canadian Centre for Home Education. This study surveyed home-schooled students whose parents participated in a comprehensive study on home education in 1994. The study compared home-schoolers who are now adults with their peers. The results are astounding. When measured against the average Canadians ages 15 to 34 years old, home-educated Canadian adults ages 15 to 34 were more socially engaged (69 percent participated in organized activities at least once per week, compared with 48 percent of the comparable population). Average income for home-schoolers was also higher, but perhaps more significantly, while 11 percent of Canadians ages 15 to 34 rely on welfare, there were no cases of government support as the primary source of income for home-schoolers. Home-schoolers also were happier; 67.3 percent described themselves as very happy, compared with 43.8 percent of the comparable population. Almost all of the home-schoolers — 96 percent — thought home-schooling had prepared them well for life.

This new study should cause many critics to rethink their position on the issue of socialization. Not only are home-schoolers actively engaged in civic life, they also are succeeding in all walks of life. Many critics believed, and some parents feared, that home-schoolers would not be able to compete in the job market. But the new study shows home-schoolers are found in a wide variety of professions. Being home-schooled has not closed doors on career choices. The results are a great encouragement to all home-schooling families and to parents thinking about home-schooling. Home-schoolers, typically identified as being high academic achievers, also can make the grade in society. Both "Homeschooling Grows Up" and "Fifteen Years Later" amply demonstrate home-school graduates are active, involved, productive citizens. Home-school families are leading the way in Canadian and American education, and this new study clearly demonstrates home-school parents are on the right path. To read the full study or a synopsis, visit www.hslda.ca/cche. (to index)

* GERMAN HOME-SCHOOLING FAMILY GRANTED ASYLUM IN US - Homeschooling has been illegal in Germany for most of the 20th century. But a decision in the United States granting asylum to a German homeschooling couple has revived an ongoing debate on the freedom of education.

On Tuesday an American judge granted asylum to a German couple who wanted to homeschool their children, bringing international attention to the debate in Germany over the rights of parents to freely educate their children.

The decision came from immigration judge Lawrence O. Burman in Memphis, Tennessee. Judge Burman said the German government violated Uwe and Hannelore Romeike's "basic human rights," according to the Web site of the Home School Legal Defense Association, a Virginia-based pro-homeschooling organization that represented the couple. "Homeschoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress," Burman was quoted as saying. "This family has a well-founded fear of persecution… therefore, they are eligible for asylum." The parents identify themselves as evangelical Christians and say religion was the primary reason why they chose to homeschool their children. Hannelore Romeike said public education can never be neutral.

"During the last 10-20 years the curriculum in public schools has been more and more against Christian values," she told the Associated Press. "We communicate our values, the teachers communicate theirs, and if the kids are at school, we cannot have an influence on what they learn." Atlanta-based German consul Lutz Goergens declined to comment directly on the Romeike case, but he pointed out that German parents can send their children to private or religious schools as an alternative to public schools.
(27 January 2010, DW) (to index)

* CHRISTIAN TEACHER FORCED OUT OF BRITISH SCHOOL FOR COMPLAINING THAT MUSLIM STUDENTS REGARDED 9/11 BOMBERS AS HEROES - A Christian teacher yesterday claimed he was forced out of his job after complaining that Muslim pupils as young as eight hailed the September 11 hijackers as heroes. Nicholas Kafouris, 52, is suing his former school for racial discrimination. He told a tribunal that he had to leave his £30,000-a-year post because he would not tolerate the 'racist' and 'anti-Semitic' behaviour of Year 4 pupils. The predominantly Muslim youngsters openly praised Islamic extremists in class and described the September 11 terrorists as 'heroes and martyrs'. One pupil said: 'Don't touch me, you're a Christian' when he brushed against him. Others said: 'We want to be Islamic bombers when we grow up', and 'The Christians and Jews are our enemies - you too because you're a Christian'.

Mr Kafouris, a Greek Cypriot, taught for 12 years at Bigland Green Primary School in Tower Hamlets, East London. According to Ofsted 'almost all' its 465 pupils are from ethnic minorities and a vast proportion do not speak English as a first language. The teacher claims racial discrimination by the school, its headmistress and her assistant head after they failed to take action about the comments made by pupils to him.

He said there was a change in attitude of the pupils after the atrocities of September 11, 2001. They told him: 'We hate the Christians' and 'We hate the Jews', despite his attempts to stop them. He said he filled out a Racist Incident Reporting Sheet but claimed headmistress Jill Hankey dismissed his concerns. In a statement submitted to the Central London Employment Tribunal he said: 'Miss Hankey proceeded to excuse and justify the pupil's behaviour, conduct and remarks to me as if I had no right to be offended by the child's remarks and conduct. 'Amongst Miss Hankey's justifications for the child's remarks, she said, "If the child was older, say 15, I might take it more seriously. He's only nine - he's only doing it to wind you up".' He added: 'I felt the head's behaviour and conduct towards me amounted to direct religious discrimination. I was intimidated in the way she spoke to me which indicated "Don't come back with such issues again".
(Mail Online, 9 February 2010) (to index)

* OUTRAGE AS BRITISH MINISTER CALLS ON WIVES TO BE SUBMISSIVE TO HUSBANDS - A vicar has caused outrage among his congregation after urging women to "be silent" and "submit" to their husbands.
Angus MacLeay, rector of St Nicholas Church in Sevenoaks, Kent, made the comments, which some parishioners thought were more in keeping with a sermon from the dark ages than the modern Church of England, in a leaflet entitled "The Role of Women in the Local Church".
In it, he said women should "not speak" if asked a question that could be answered by their husbands and should "submit to their husbands in everything".
Using Bible references to justify his comments, he wrote: "Wives are to submit to their husbands in everything in recognition of the fact that husbands are head of the family as Christ is head of the church.
"This is the way God has ordered their relationships with each other."
In another passage, which appeared under the heading "More Difficult ­Passages to Consider", he continued: "It would seem that women should remain silent … if questions could legitimately be answered by their husbands."
But MacLeay's words were too difficult to swallow for the dozens of women who cancelled direct debit subscriptions to the Anglican church and vowed not to return.
On Sunday, the curate at St Nicholas delivered a sermon entitled "Marriage and Women" which also urged women to submit to their husbands.
Reverend Mark Oden blamed the "modern woman" for high divorce rates and told the congregation: "We know ­marriage is not working. We only need to look at figures … Wives, submit to your own husbands."
Despite the anger and offence caused, Oden stood by his comments. "I did not set out to unnecessarily offend people, but I stand by what God has said in his word, the Bible," he said.
(The Guardian, 13 February 2010) (to index)

* ‘CHOOSE LIFE’ LICENSE PLATE TREND GAINING - Abortion rights advocates have been unable to halt the "Choose Life" license plate variations in nearly two dozen states, so now they're working to balance the bumper debate.
Activists are pushing a "Trust Women/Protect Choice" license plate in Virginia, which would become the fourth state to offer a pro-choice plate and the first to require legislative approval for it. Supporters have threatened to sue if lawmakers don't give drivers the option.
"We really don't feel like a license plate is the place to be promoting a political agenda," said Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia. "However, the pro-choice community feels like they're being taken on by the anti-choice side with this license plate, and we feel like we need to get involved."