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3. Church wall collapses in Uganda, leaving 26 dead and about 100 injured
An evangelical church in Kampala, Uganda's capital city, was still under construction. But to hold services during construction, the church had set up a wood-and-tin building inside the unfinished brick building. Amid heavy rains during Wednesday night services, some of the brick walls collapsed, killing and trapping worshipers (photos). The death toll varies in media accounts, but Kampala's New Vision paper, which has the most recent report, says 26 died. Also worth noting in the New Vision account: "Survivors blamed the incident on rival pastors, saying they cast an evil spell on the church." The Ugandan government suspects poor construction.

4. Christian ministry will donate to atheist group in exchange for church attendance
The Wall Street Journal's front-page report Thursday on atheist Hemant Mehta's eBay auction, where he sold willingness to attend church services, is getting a fair bit of attention. The $504 winner was Jim Henderson of the evangelistic ministry Off the Map. But "I'm not trying to convert you," Henderson told Mehta when they met. Instead, he was hiring Mehta to visit and write about 10 to 15 church services. "You're going there almost like a critic," Henderson said. "If you happen to get converted, that's off the clock." The $504 went to Mehta's Secular Student Alliance. The Journal goes into some detail about Henderson's motives, but you'll probably also want to read a brief article on Henderson from our sister publication, Building Church Leaders. The article describes Henderson's approach as shifting evangelism "from sales to service."

"In evangelism, you want to give people something rather than ask them for something," Henderson said. "But what do people want? Attention. People want attention. So I give them that. I call those times 'free attention giveaways.'" Henderson's attention giveaway is now seeing quite a return on investment.

5. Lefty group overplays its hand
A group calling itself the Campaign to Defend the Constitution (DefCon)—made up of former NARAL Pro-Choice America head Kate Michelman, Nation writer Max Blumenthal, and other prominent liberals—took out a page in The New York Times yesterday criticizing Ralph Reed, James Dobson, and Louis Sheldon for being "base hypocrites knee-deep in the Jack Abramoff scandal." The group claims that Dobson appeared "on radio commercials paid for by Jack Abramoff's Indian casino clients. These casinos gave millions to Jack Abramoff to limit competition." The group is also running television ads along the same lines in Colorado Springs and elsewhere.

"What we're really emphasizing is that it's hypocritical for a moral leader like James Dobson to be producing these ads when the money, whether he knew it or not, came from gambling interests," campaign spokeswoman Sarah Belanger told The Denver Post.

As it turns out, it's the Campaign to Defend the Constitution that has a gambling problem. It's holding horrible cards, and Focus has rightly called its bluff. On its site, Focus explains that it "did oppose gambling expansion in Alabama and Louisiana in the years indicated, but our involvement came in response to requests from our trusted allies—in Louisiana, then state legislator Tony Perkins (now president of the Family Research Council) and Gene Mills, executive director of the Louisiana Family Forum; and, in Alabama, Gary Palmer of the Alabama Policy Institute. It is important to note, again, that we funded these efforts ourselves; we received no money from Mr. Abramoff or any other lobbying interest." There are other refutations as well. (Focus on the Family's Friday broadcast is about the ads, but Weblog hasn't listened to it yet.)

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March (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50