RUSSIA
Christian Journal Targets Thinkers
A Christian magazine is filling the Russian intellectual void left by 74 years of communism. Pilgrim is a joint effort between scholars in Russia and the Illinois-based Christian Bridge to examine issues from an evangelical perspective.
Mikhail Morgulis, president of Christian Bridge and U.S. editor of Pilgrim, says Russian intellectuals are good at talking about problems but lack practical solutions. “The idea of this journal is to influence intelligentsia with the ideas of Christian solutions to social problems so that they in turn can deliver these ideas to society.”
Pilgrim debuted in 1992 with a 100,000 circulation. Writings of J. I. Packer, Francis Schaeffer, and C. S. Lewis are included. Other Christian magazines in Russia “do not print serious Christian thinkers,” says Morgulis, a Ukrainian native.
ANGOLA
Missionaries Report Atrocities
Angolan government forces are engaged in systematic executions of civilians suspected of being opposition sympathizers, according to Protestant missionaries.
The Angolan government, which is controlled by the formerly communist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola party, “is slaughtering innocent civilians” in rebel-held cities, says Preston Parrish, president of Awakenings, a Christian communications group.
The U.S. State Department also has “heard reports of a number of very terrible incidents,” and although it has not been able to confirm them, the department has “strongly voiced its concern.”
The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola rebels say that last month government warplanes attacked the rebelheld city of Huambo, leaving hundreds of civilians wounded. Missionaries also recently revealed details of the execution of several hundred unarmed people in the town of Lubango in January. Parrish says, “They saw government troops going house to house, dragging out men, women, and children and shooting them on the spot.”
FRANCE
Parents Fighting Removal of Children
The plight of four Christian couples in France whose children were taken from their homes by authorities has attracted the attention of Western human-rights groups. Seven children were recently removed from members of the Eglise Chretienne La Citadelle, a Protestant church in Paris, after the state claimed they had been abused.
Former ECC members and some French Protestant leaders say the now-defunct church was a cult using education methods to make children “permanent victims of corporal punishment and psychological manipulation.” News Network International has investigated reports of child abuse but found no evidence of abuse.
Church members dispute abuse claims. Steve Snyder, of Christian Solidarity International (CSI), says Christians who know the families say “they are, basically, just a Bible-believing small group of Christians.” The Home School Legal Defense Association has joined CSI in support of the parents, who have not been allowed to speak or visit their children for five months. The parents are appealing to a French court.
PEOPLE AND EVENTS
In Brief
Highland Christian Mission founder Stuart H. Merriam, 70, is serving a five-year, hard-labor prison term in Papua New Guinea after the country’s National Court convicted him of sexually abusing a boy from 1980 to 1983. The American missionary says he was falsely accused and did not receive a fair trial. The Highland board has named Merriam’s wife, Carol, acting general director of the U.S.-based mission organization, founded in 1964.
• A bipartisan “Many Neighbors, One Earth” resolution has been introduced in Congress as a method to shift the purpose of U.S. foreign aid to hunger and poverty prevention rather than for military and security assistance. Says cosponsor Doug Bereuter (R-Neb.), “Sustainable development must be brought to the top of the world agenda, for both humanitarian and economic reasons.”
• The Slavic Gospel Association dedicated new international headquarters this month at Loves Park, Illinois. Gregory Kommendant, president of the Union of Evangelicals-Baptist, the largest evangelical organization in the Commonwealth of lndependent States, led a group of dignitaries from the former Soviet Union to the ceremony.
• Sidney DeWaal, 57, is the new president and chief executive officer of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. DeWaal, former dean of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, also will spend time at the institute’s U.S. office in Rockford, Illinois.
