Related articles and links |  1 of 2

Behold, the saviors of Christian Web sites
LifeAudio.com, run by four Princeton grads in their mid-twenties, has announced it's taking over Pat Robertson's Christianity.com Web site. It has already pulled one Christian Web site out of the ashes: streaming-audio site Lightsource.com. "In February of this year, we acquired Lightsource.com under circumstances similar to those of Christianity.com, and within three months were able to stabilize it and manage it to profitability," the company explained in a letter to Christianity.com partner ministries. "We hope to do the same thing with the Christianity.com network, while continuing to provide a high level of service and working hard to make the original vision a reality." More news to come, surely. We don't know, for example, what's going to happen to Crosswalk.com (Weblog left a voice mail message this morning).

Nigeria's Shari'ah law gets a lot messier
A young man charged with theft in northern Nigeria had a plan to save his hand from amputation: he told the court he had converted to Christianity, and thus immune from the controversial Islamic law being implemented in much of the African nation. In court yesterday, he recanted his conversion. "I am a Muslim, my parents are Muslims," the thief, Mohamed Ali, said. "I did it under confusion and I regret it. I pray for forgiveness." The court didn't amputate his hand, reasoning that he didn't steal enough to warrant the punishment. He got nine months in prison and 30 lashes instead. Still, Ali's story highlights the problem of Shari'ah law in Nigeria, where Muslims say the laws won't apply to Christians.

Elsewhere in Nigeria, the president of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria is predicting a bloodbath after several churches were razed. And in the northern city of Kano, several Muslims killed a Christian truck driver after he accidentally ran over a copy of the Koran one of them had dropped.

Rescuing the Burnhams?
Weblog has said this before, but it looks like something big might happen this weekend or early next week in the attempt to free New Tribes missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham. Check Yahoo's full coverage area, The Philippine Daily Inquirer, and ABS-CBN for updates.

Science and health:

• Science solves more mysteries of the Bible | More "startling revelations" about the most impossible tales from the ancient Scriptures, including Jonah, manna, Jericho, and other stories (Popular Mechanics)
• Mayo study puts prayer to the test | Prayer doesn't affect deaths, heart attacks, hospitalizations, or strokes say researchers (Star-Tribune, Minneapolis)
• Back from brink patients 'prove the soul exists' | One in 10 had experienced emotions, visions, or lucid thoughts while they were "clinically dead" (The Daily Telegraph)

Church and state:

• Religion must be removed from all functions of state | The government's mistake is to confuse faith with race (Polly Toynbee, The Guardian)
• Bus prayer threatens driver's job | Woman says religion was not discussed with pupil-riders (The Sun, Baltimore)
• Court won't hear graduation prayer | Action will likely increase pressure for a stronger religious presence at public school ceremonies (Associated Press)
• Also: High court allows graduation prayers | Justices decline to review ruling that gives students final say on 'message' (USA Today)
• Also: High court turns away question: Is prayer at school events constitutional? | The court's seeming consensus is that if schools establish a neutral procedure that might or might not result in prayer being delivered by a student, it is constitutional (Tony Mauro, Freedom Forum)

next page... |  1 of 2

December (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45