Global Glimpses

A poll on spirituality, conducted for the Ottawa Citizen and Global Television, found that only 25% of Canadians attend church weekly but 75% consider religion and spirituality important to them. Two-thirds of the 1,410 Canadian adults surveyed pray at least once a week. Of those, 64% believe their prayers will be answered. Fifty-three percent of Canadians believe in divine intervention or miracles. The survey was conducted between Nov. 28 and Dec. 2, 1997.--

While Christian missionaries were visiting an isolated tribe in the land of Boshu in Ethiopia for the second time, one of the leaders of the Me-en people stood up and said, "We must follow the path of Christosi" (the local word for Christ). He explained that Christ had appeared to him in a dream and told him someone would come the very day the missionaries arrived and give them a message.--

Many people trust psychics' ability to foretell the future.However, not one seer predicted Princess Diana's death. Instead, a psychic in the London Mirror said her "current relationship" would "last forever" and produce a baby girl. Another psychic used tarot cards to predict a new man would enter the princess's life. In May, 1996, psychic Maureen Conway wrote that Diana would wed two more times, to an Englishman and then possibly an American--with neither relationship lasting very long.--

Patrick Glynn was a Harvard-educated intellectual historian and an atheist. In the early 1990s, he realized that he erred in rejecting God. Consequently, he wrote the book God, the Evidence: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World. Glynn, 46, considers three contributing factors in his conversion: people's near-death visions of an afterlife; the voluminous research demonstrating faith's mental and physical benefits; and the "anthropic principle". This principle states that life couldn't have developed as it has unless present scientific laws already existed at creation. Recognition of this principle forced Glynn to replace the 200-year-old theory of a random universe with that of a universe ordered by an intelligent God. Recently, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report ran cover stories about science recognizing a God-designed universe.--

TV has a greater influence on our lives than parents, teachers and religious leaders combined, said 56% of people in a US survey.--

FOCUS ON THE FAMILY (QUOTED IN IDOL MONEY REVIEW AND WORLD MONITOR)

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