People and Events

Setting a church on fire could lead to a 99-year prison sentence under a bill passed by the Texas State Senate. State senator Rodney Ellis, author of the bill, said he thought it was appropriate for a state "in the heart of the Bible Belt" to have "the strictest arson law against church burning in America".--
EPNS

Mennonite Disaster Service summed up its past year of service as responding to "unnatual disasters" at its annual all-unit meeting Feb. 7-8 in Columbus, Miss. The unnatural disasters included the rash of church-burnings in the US south and chronic housing problems in poor areas of the US south. MDS executive coordinator Lowell Detweiler asked whether MDS is stretching its mandate when it gets involved in human-caused disasters. Most participants expressed support for this type of MDS activity, but some said that natural disaster victims should take priority. Others noted that responding to issues such as racism require a shift in focus from physical construction to building relationships. In other MDS news, Detweiler has been commissioned to write a book of MDS stories and history to mark MDS's 50th anniversary in the year 2000. Detweiler is leaving his current role in 1998, but will remain on staff to work on anniversary activities.--
MDS

Migration North: Mennonites from Mexico

, a video produced by Mennonite Central Committee Canada was nominated for a Manitoba Motion Picture Industry Association award (Blizzard Award) in the category of Best Script--Non Dramatic. Gladys Terichow and Daile J. Unruh scripted the MCC video. Bruce Hildebrand produced and directed it. The video documents the story of Mennonites returning to Canada from Mexico. The winner in the category was If Only I Was An Indian, a National Film Board of Canada production.--
MCC

Hussein Qambar Ali (known as Robert Hussein) is reported to have converted back to Islam after the Arabic newspaper Al-Rai Al-Aam printed a photograph of him shaking hands with a local Muslim sheikh. The paper reported that Hussein repeated the one-sentence creed of Islam on Jan. 29 before Sheikh Mohamed Al-Awadhi and Sheikh Salah Al-Rashed, identified as leaders in the local Islamic Presentation Committee, though IPC says the leaders were wrongly identified. So far, Hussein has neither confirmed nor denied his reported reconversion. After publicly declaring conversion to Christianity in December, 1995, Hussein emigrated to the US, where he married an American woman. As required by Islamic law, he had been forcibly divorced from his Muslim wife, whose refusal to grant him visiting rights to his children had first prompted him to go public about his conversion.--
Compass Direct

Ten Coptic Christians were killed and five others wounded at a church in southern Egypt when suspected Muslim extremists opened fire with automatic rifles Feb. 12. The victims were students attending a youth meeting in the Mary Guirguis Church. All were members of Egypt's minority Coptic community, which makes up 15% of the population.--
Compass Direct

A group of 31 Canadians representing farm, church, aid and development organizations met March 21-22 in Saskatoon for a two-day workshop following up on the World Food Summit in Rome last November. They concluded that Canada has a major role to play in ensuring that the right to food becomes a respected, enforceable right for all people. They discussed the two key declarations coming out of the Rome meetings, specifically the "International Sustainable Food Security Convention" (a treaty similar to those which reduce the risk of nuclear war or ozone-depletion) and the "Code of Conduct on the Right to Food" (a code ensuring implementation and enforcement of the right to food). Group participants recommended that the Canadian government support the Code of Conduct at a World Food Summit follow-up meeting scheduled for Geneva in May and that it host a meeting in November to review Canadian progress.--
Canadian Foodgrains Bank

A Time magazine poll found that 87% of Americans believe they are likely to go to Heaven, but only 67% believe Heaven exists. Just 18% said they thought all of their friends would join them in Heaven.--
EPNS

A Church of England bishop gave up something unusual for Lent--reading the Bible. He spent his two-hour daily reading time with the Koran, the Muslim holy book, instead. "If only all Christians would take seriously the beliefs of other traditions and religions, we would be all the better for it," said Alan Smithson, Bishop of Jarrow. We need to help the church understand other faiths "not as rivals, but as fellow travellers," he said.--
Mennonite Reporter

The newly-formed "Mennonite Society of Calgary" is planning an inter-Mennonite seniors housing project. The society has produced a vision statement and a constitution, initiated land searches and has been incorporated according to provincial regulations. While membership and admission to the community will not be restricted to Mennonites only, the underlying theology and philosophy will be Anabaptist/Mennonite.--
Mennonite Society of Calgary

Two Amish brothers from Ohio say they'll risk being shot or jailed rather than wear the "worldly" orange hunting clothing required by state law. Samuel Bontrager said he and his brother Joas would not comply with the court order. "We are standing on our principle," he said. Members of the Amish community shun modern conveniences and bright colours, including the fluorescent orange which Ohio law requres hunters to wear--even when hunting on their own property.--
EPNS

Can a church member who has an affair with her priest sue for malpractice? That's the question before the New Jersey Supreme Court. An attorney for the woman in the case, identified only as "F.G.", argued that priests should be held to the same standards as psychiatrists when they do counselling--including the standard that having sex with patients is malpractice. But an attorney for Rev. Alex MacDonnell, a married Episcopal priest who has admitted to the affair, said that holding clergy to such a standard would require courts to make decisions on church-related questions that are protected by constitutional religious freedom guarantees. About 30 states have held that religious leaders cannot be held to the same standards as psychiatrists.--
EPNS

More than half a million Americans were withdrawn from combat during World War II because of psychiatric collpase, according to On Killing, a book by Colonel Dave Grossman. The chief reason was "an intense resistance within most men to killing their fellow man". Until Vietnam, he adds, most soldiers would not fire their weapons to kill the enemy. The US military is trying to counter this resistance by "realistic training" and increased "bonding". In other military developments, the US Marines have introduced exercises to promote "personal values and self-awareness", instead of only "brow-beating" as a training method.--
Globe and Mail