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Five killed in church bus crash
Yesterday morning, a bus chartered by Metro Church of Garland, Texas, on its way to a youth camp crashed into an I-20 bridge support. The bus driver and four youths—ages 12, 13, 14, and 16—were killed. Thirty-six others aboard were injured.

"I thought it was a movie," 16-year-old Kristan Grubbs told The Dallas Morning News. "I was talking to my friends, and I turned around and I saw this big pillar … coming toward us."

Exactly how the crash happened is a mystery.

The church, which calls itself "Southern Baptist charismatic," has been in the news before: it used to be the home church of Operation Rescue's Flip Benham.

Bologna church targeted by Muslim militants, says Italian paper
The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera says Muslims planned to destroy the San Petronio Basilica in Bologna. Paramilitary police, the paper said, intercepted phone conversations among Tunisians and Moroccans tied to the Algerian-based Salafist Group for Call and Combat; leader Hassan Hattab had ordered the church's destruction.

It's not just any church. San Petronio has a 600-year-old fresco depicting Muhammad being devoured by demons in Hell. Muslims have long protested the artwork, reports the Associated Press.

Gracia Burnham continues her recovery
Rescued but widowed, missionary Gracia Burnham continues to heal physically and emotionally, The Wichita Eagle reports today. "Sometimes at night, Gracia Burnham's children sleep on blankets spread on the floor of her bedroom," says the Eagle's Alex Branch. Gracia Burnham isn't giving any media interviews, speaking engagements "or anything that would take her from her family," says her mother-in-law and fellow missionary Oreta Burnham. She and her three children are, however, heading to Arkansas this weekend for an annual family reunion.

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Church & State:

• What's Jefferson's 'wall' made of? | Did he mean an impenetrable wall so high that neither could ever see the other? A picket fence that would allow roses growing on one side to entwine with ivy on the other? A Lego wall whose bricks can be rearranged according to public will? (Linda P. Campbell, The Miami Herald)
  
  
• The gospel of abstinence | The problem with the abstinence-only classes isn't just that the groups receiving the dollars read like a Who's Who of the Religious Right. It's that programs preaching - excuse me, teaching - this are spreading fear, misinformation, and disinformation. (Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe)
  
  
• Another Tennessee county ordered to remove commandments display | Judge says it was difficult 'to reach any conclusion other than that the sole purpose of erecting the challenged display was for the advancement of a religious purpose.' (Associated Press)
  
  
• Church seeks to end Blair veto on top appointments | Calls to scrap role of the Prime Minister in appointing bishops (The Times, London)
  
  
• Monks stand by their men in a land without women | The very principle on which Orthodox monastic enclave of Mt Athos was founded—all women, and all images of women, are banned—is under challenge for gender discrimination by the European Union (The Guardian, London)

Religious liberty:

• Christians defend rights in court | Convinced traditional civil-rights groups are antagonistic to Christians, activists increasingly are turning to a secular institution—the courts—to protect the right to noisily declare one's faith. (The Detroit News)
  
  

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June (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46