People and Events

17% of British adults consider religion very important in their lives, 27% consider it fairly important, and 55% claim it is not very important, according to a 1995 survey of 1,091 adults. A similar survey in the US conducted in 1995-96 revealed that 57% of Americans say religion is very important, with an additional 26% saying it is fairly important; only 17% say religion is of little importance. Americans claiming to be born-again or evangelical Christians outnumber their British counterparts by four to one. Weekly attendance at worship services is reported by only 12% of Britons, with 46% saying they never set foot in a place of worship except for an occasional wedding or funeral. 40% of Americans say they attend worship.--
Emerging Trends

Jerry Moran has become the first Mennonite to serve in the US Congress since World War II. He is a member of North Oak Community Church in Hays, Kansas, a Mennonite Brethren congregation. Moran's district covers all of western and most of central Kansas, including Hillsboro. The last Mennonite to serve in Congress was Edward Clayton Eicher, a Democrat from Iowa, who was in the House 1932-38. According to the Mennonite Encyclopedia, other Mennonites who have served in Congress were Iowa Republican William Ramseyer (1915-1933) and Ohio Democrat Benjamin F. Welty (1917-1921). Since then, congressional campaigns by Mennonites have all failed, including one this year by Republican Cliff Unruh, an MB from Reedley, Calif.--
Mennonite Weekly Review

Joe Campbell , Mennonite Central Committee director for northern Ireland, has been named a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his efforts to facilitate a peaceful settlement between Protestants and Roman Catholics at Drumcree, Northern Ireland in 1995. He and colleague Brendan McAllister successfully mediated a potentially bloody dispute between the Orangemen, a Protestant fraternity that holds annual marches celebrating the victory of Protestant King William over Irish Catholics, and the Catholic community who opposed the march through their neighbourhood. He and his wife Janet will attend a ceremony at Buckingham Palace later this year to receive the honour from the Queen. Campbell acknowledges that his acceptance of the honour may be perceived as "being bought over by one side". But he says he hopes the award will encourage others to join in working for peace and justice.--
MCC

63% of the worldwide population of people with HIV/AIDS live in Africa. In Uganda, HIV/AIDS is 50% higher among people with formal training such as doctors and teachers than among Uganda's general population. Girls aged 15-19 are 5-6 times more likely to be infected than boys, due likely to some traditional healers who tell men with AIDS that having sex with a virgin will cure them. Life expectancy is predicted to drop from 40.5 years in 1996 to 38.5 in 2001. The country has 1 million AIDS orphans.--
MCC

Mennonite Central Committee is supplying food valued at $2 million for a "winter relief" program for residents of Kabul, the capital city of war-ravaged Afghanistan. A portion of MCC's food will go to some of Kabul's 30,000 widows, some to compensate unemployed men for their labour on sanitation projects such as mucking sewage from the streets, and some to women for sewing quilts that will be given to needy people. MCC's contribution of oil, lentils, wheat and other food items, coordinated through the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, will arrive in Kabul in various installments. Some has already been shipped. MCC has also been invited to place a teacher, Jonathan Bartsch, at the Islamic University of Afghanistan in Peshawar, Pakistan to help faculty develop a conflict transformation course for Afghan refugee students. Since 1979, fighting has killed 1 million Afghans and forced several million more to flee their country. MCC worker Juliette Leon Bartsch teaches English to Afghan refugee women living in Pakistan. Most students are teachers in their own language, but are learning English to better their chances of emigrating to the West.--
MCC

Brother Andrew , author of God's Smuggler and founder of Open Doors, has been awarded the World Evangelical Fellowship's Religious Liberty Award. Established in 1992, the award is given to one who has made an outstanding contribution to the cause of religious liberty. Brian O Connell, former director of the WEF Religious Liberty Commission said, "In our opinion, no one has done more in raising the awareness of the persecuted church than Brother Andrew." Brother Andrew has dedicated much of his life to helping the thousands of persecuted Christians worldwide. What began as a one-man operation, taking Bibles and Christian literature to Christians behind the Iron Curtain, soon developed into a worldwide organization with a staff of hundreds. The organization delivers Bibles into countries where they are banned, supports persecuted believers, and trains church leaders who live in countries which are opposed to the gospel. The award will be given at the May, 1997 WEF General Assembly in Abbotsford, B.C.--
Compass Direct

While Canada officially endorsed the UN declaration of 1996 as the "International Year for the Eradication of Poverty", the trends in Canada served to increase poverty, not eradicate it, says the National Anti-Poverty Organization. An international study classifies 15.4% of the families in Canada as poor, the third-worst rating among nine Western industrialized countries, better than the US with 18.4% and Australia with 15.7%, but well behind European countries. The percentage of the total national income going to the richest 20% of Canadian households is nearly twice as high as that shared by the bottom 50%. NAPO says the situation will get worse not only because of high unemployment rates but also because many new jobs bring in only low wages. (One-third of the "poor" are employed.) NAPO is critical of the federal government's cutbacks of unemployment insurance and social funding.--
MCC

A Winkler, Man. church was hoping to raise $3,000 to pay for a judicial review of the deportation of Emmanuel Solis Spraggs. Covenant Mennonite Church sponsored then 9-year-old Spraggs along with his family in 1986, allowing them to flee Guatemala. However, Spraggs missed the citizenship court proceeding in 1993 in which he was to have become a Canadian citizen, as his mother and 8 siblings did. He was subsequently convicted of breaking and entering and is currently serving time in a Manitoba jail. He was scheduled for deportation upon his release in mid-February. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Lucienne Robillard earlier rejected the family's request to allow Spraggs to stay in Canada on compassionate and humanitarian grounds. Though no one denies the crimes he committed, the church hopes to appeal the deportation order, saying that 20-year-old Spraggs deserves a second chance as an adult.--
MCC Canada

The Jubilee Sunday school curriculum , published by a consortium of four Mennonite denominations with input from Mennonite Brethren and Friends United Meeting (a branch of the Quakers), was the most highly rated curriculum in a survey of nine denominations. Among the nine were two of the four denominations that use Jubilee, the Church of the Brethren and the Mennonite Church. (The other two denominations that produce Jubilee are the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Brethren in Christ). 61% of the Mennonites said they used the Jubilee curriculum; 58% of the Brethren showed usage. David C. Cook curricula, considered the primary competition for most denominational publishers, are used by 19% of respondents across all nine denominations. Satisfaction with the Jubilee curriculum was highest among the Brethren at 8.33 (out of a possible 10), and the Mennonites at 8.27. Comparing curricula, satisfaction was highest for Jubilee (8.42) and for Whole People of God (8.35), a curriculum produced by the United Church of Canada. Churches using Jubilee praised its appeal to children, its ease of preparation and its hands-on activities. The Mennonites and the Brethren were among four denominations that placed greater importance on choosing resources published by their own denominations. Other churches involved in the survey were American Baptist, Church of God, Disciples of Christ, Moravians, Presbyterians, United Church of Christ and United Methodist. The survey was conducted by the United Methodist Publishing House and funded by a grant from the National Council of Churches.--
Brethren Press

A Hawaii judge ruled Dec. 3 that the state's refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples constitutes illegal discrimination, but issued an order the following day forbidding officials from granting licenses for homosexual couples while the case is appealed. The appeal could take a year. First Circuit Judge Kevin Chang ruled in favour of three homosexual couples, saying the state failed to present a "compelling reason" to justify its policy banning same-sex marriage. The case began in 1990, when the three couples were denied marriage licenses. They filed a lawsuit, and in 1993 the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that the denial violated the equal protection clause of the state constitution; the court ordered the case back into a lower court and said the state must show a compelling interest if it wanted to continue its ban on same-sex marriage. Because the US Constitution's "full faith and credit" clause requires states to honour contracts made in other states, there was a chance that the Hawaii decision could have forced other states to legally recognize same-sex marriages performed in Hawaii. To prevent that, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act on Sept. 10, which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman and allows states to ignore homosexual marriages performed in other states.--
EPNS

A US court must decide if US evangelist Robert Tilton's church is a religious institution or personal property. The distinction is necessary in deciding whether Tilton's first and second wives deserve part of Tilton's televangelism empire, reported to have $30 million US in assets, including a $1.6 million parsonage. First wife Marte Tilton, co-founder of the ministry, intervened Dec. 2 in Tilton's divorce from his second wife, evangelist Leigh Valentine Tilton. Marte Tilton argues that the church was community property, and that both she and Leigh are entitled to portions of it. Robert maintains that the church is a charitable organization rather than his personal property, even though it has no other board, elders, deacons or finance committee members. Marte and Robert Tilton were married 25 years. That marriage ended in divorce three years after an ABC "PrimeTime Live" report exposed Tilton's luxurious lifestyle and raised other questions about the ministry's honesty.--
EPNS

Two atheist groups once controlled by famed atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair have reported that $627,500 US disappeared last year about the same time that she, her son and adopted daughter disappeared according to a Dec. 8 report in the San Antonio Express-News. Early rumours suggested that O'Hair was dead and that her death was being kept quiet by followers to quash possible stories of a deathbed conversion. The disappearance of cash suggests to some that she and her family may have settled comfortably overseas, perhaps in New Zealand, a favourite spot. O'Hair is best known for the lawsuit leading to the 1963 Supreme Court decision which removed government-sponsored prayer from US public schools.--
EPNS

Women who have had abortions are more likely to commit suicide, Finnish researchers reported in the British Medical Journal Dec. 6. Mika Gissler and other researchers at Finland's National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health used national records to check the suicide rate for up to one year after the end of a pregnancy, whether through birth, miscarriage or abortion. They concluded, "The suicide rate after an abortion was three times the general suicide rate and six times that associated with birth."--
EPNS

Homosexuals in Berlin are calling for their own memorial to recall Nazi Germany's persecution of homosexuals. An estimated 10,000 homosexuals were sent to concentration camps and forced to wear pink triangles during the Nazi Holocaust. The call for a memorial came at a conference sponsored by the private group Initiative Homo Monument and the city administration's department for homosexual issues.--
EPNS

Controversial pop singer Madonna says she will baptize her new daughter Lourdes as a Catholic, but is unsure what role religion will play in her upbringing. "There are things about Catholicism that I disagree with, but there are a lot of things I am still intrigued by. I still go to church and light candles. The church provides a kind of sanctuary and a sense of community. I'll teach her about Catholicism but also about all religions, especially Buddhism, Judaism and the Kabbala (Jewish mystical teaching). My own religion combines all those. I would rather present the Bible to my daughter as `Some very interesting stories you could learn from' rather than `This is the rule.' "--
EPNS

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