IRAN
Top Evangelical Leader Murdered
Haik Hovsepian-Mehr, superintendent of the Assemblies of God Churches in Iran the past 13 years, was murdered January 19, three days after helping to secure the freedom of an Iranian Christian about to be executed.
Hovsepian-Mehr, 48, disappeared en route to the Tehran airport. Police claim they found his stabbed and bruised body on a street January 20. Officials did not turn over the body to Hovsepian-Mehr’s family until January 30—after he had been buried in an Islamic cemetery. Police said they had been unable to identify Hovsepian-Mehr, even though he was the nation’s most prominent Protestant as chair of the Evangelical Ministers Association.
The denominational leader had alerted Christians throughout the world about Assemblies of God evangelist Mehdi Dibaj. Dibaj, 59, had been sentenced to death for refusing to renounce his Christian beliefs, but he was released from prison in Sari on January 16 following an outcry from Christian organizations and human-rights groups. Dibaj had been imprisoned for ten years.
Hovsepian-Mehr had refused to comply with new laws designed to discourage Muslim conversions. Muslims in Iran are now prohibited from entering churches, and Christian services must not be conducted in Parsee, the official language of Iran.
ARGENTINA
Accused ‘Family’ Members Released
Twenty-one members of the Family, an aberrant sect formerly known as the Children of God, were released from custody in December after an Argentine Federal Court of Appeals ruled they had been wrongfully arrested.
Sixteen men and five women had been seized along with more than 100 children in September raids ordered by federal Judge Robert Marquevich. But an appeals court said Marquevich had operated out of his jurisdiction. Similar raids on Family communes have occurred in France and Australia in the past two years.
Evangelical cult-watching groups say the Family’s long-held policy of free sex among members has created potentially abusive situations for children (CT, Oct. 25, 1993, p. 93). The Family admits that in the early 1980s some communes experimented with sex between adults and children.
Marquevich asserted the inspections of children taken in the seizure revealed that 9 of the 137 showed signs of being subjected to “cruel and atrocious maltreatment,” including sex abuse. But Family spokesman Nigel Nelson says “appointed forensic experts examined the children and testified that they were absolutely free of any signs of abuse.”
By Joe Maxwell.
GERMANY
Irreverent Ads Create Uproar
Political, religious, and social groups in Germany have galvanized to protest ads satirizing Jesus Christ and his 12 apostles in various states of undress.
Germany’s Otto Kern clothing marketer printed an ad in that country’s edition of Elle magazine, which depicted Jesus at the Last Supper as a woman dressed in a shirt and blue jeans, with his apostles as bare-breasted females, and wearing only Kern’s jeans. The ad caption reads, “We wish jointly with Jesus that women learn to respect men.”
Other versions of the ad include a male Jesus wearing open-fly jeans amid bare-breasted, jean-clad female disciples, and another female Jesus with male, Chippendale-style disciples, arrayed only in the jeans.
Germany’s Office for Unfair Competition has vowed to take legal action against Elle and Otto Kern to block further ad bookings. The German Advertiser’s Council has denounced the ads as “offensive, and blasphemous, lacking any professional or moral restraints.” Religious leaders from the Vatican, the European Evangelical Alliance, and many German churches have condemned the ads.
PEOPLE AND EVENTS
In Brief
A bomb struck the World Concern compound in Mogadishu, Somalia, February 6, and gunfire followed. No injuries were reported. World Concern Africa director Craig Anderson says violence against humanitarian agencies in Somalia has increased in recent months, including banditry, grenade attacks, and hostage taking.
• The Bible League, an international Scripture-placement organization, which is active in 90 countries and based in South Holland, Illinois, and World Gospel Crusades, an Upland, California, ministry that distributes Scripture booklets to entire countries, merged in January. Offices will be maintained in both locations. The first project of the joined organizations will be distributing Scriptures to 7 million homes in Colombia.
• The Best of Gregorian Chants, a collection of recordings by the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo de Silos monastery, has made it to the top of Spain’s pop charts and brought some unwanted publicity to the monks. The compact disc, released two weeks before Christmas, has sold nearly a quarter-million copies. EMI-Odeon, the company that produced the collection, plans eventually to release it internationally.
• Thomas K. Phillips became president of International Students, Inc. (ISI) March 1. He succeeds Gordon Loux, who left ISI last summer. More than 100 of ISI’s staff members work with local churches and others to share the gospel with the more than 500,000 international students and visiting scholars in the United States. Phillips, 46, is the former director of counseling and follow-up for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
