LEBANON
Catholic Church Blast Kills 11
Two days after 30 Muslims were massacred by an extremist Israeli settler in a West Bank mosque, a crowded Maronite Catholic church in Lebanon was bombed as parishioners lined up for Communion. The February 27 bombing 12 miles north of Beirut killed 11 worshipers and wounded 60 with an explosive hidden under a table. Another bomb was found inside the church organ and defused. The bombing left some worried about an end to Lebanon’s fragile peace after 15 years of internal conflict and civil war. “Religious tolerance and understanding are prerequisites of lasting peace in Lebanon and the region,” Drew Christiansen of the United States Catholic Conference wrote to a Lebanese embassy official. “We pray that this atrocity will not delay the work of reconciliation and reconstruction in which the Lebanese people are now engaged.”
Despite the turmoil, Pope John Paul II is still scheduled to visit Lebanon in May.
EGYPT
Five Christians Gunned Down
Human-rights groups say the Egyptian government may be too afraid of Muslim extremists to find and punish those who murdered five Coptic Christians outside Moharrak monastery 180 miles south of Cairo. The victims, including two priests, were gunned down March 11 as they tried to enter the monastery’s gates.
“The government continues to ignore the cries of Christians in Egypt,” says Steve Snyder, president of Christian Solidarity International. In its report Christians in Egypt: Church Under Siege, the Institute for Religious Minorities in the Islamic World documents widespread persecution of Christians, including imprisonment, limits on church building and repair, torture, and murder. Christians, the 1993 report states, “are under mounting pressure from the state and the Muslim revivalist movements … to accept the second class citizenship of dhimmis, to convert to Islam, or to leave the country.”
CUBA
Churches Ignore Trade Embargo
More than 150 tons of humanitarian aid was transported last month to Cuban churches from the United States by an ecumenical social action group, despite a 33-year-old trade embargo on the Communist island.
Pastors for Peace, a Minneapolis-based alliance of 600 primarily mainline churches, organized the caravan, which carried food, medical supplies, six school buses, computers, and $13,000 in cash. As with two previous humanitarian convoys to Cuba, the group did not apply for the required government license to export the materials.
“People are starving in Cuba because of the U.S. embargo,” says Errol Edwards, the group’s national coordinator. “What it is doing is a complete violation of human rights.”
Alan Wisdom of the Institute on Religion and Democracy disagrees. “The embargo may not be a wise policy, but it is not a violation of human rights.” Wisdom says the U.S. embargo forbids interaction with the dictatorial Cuban government, but it permits person-to-person humanitarian aid.
PEOPLE AND EVENTS
In Brief
Charles F. Robertson, 78, has signed a treaty with the Chinese government to sponsor a Passion play in Liaoyang City. The government is building a theater in preparation for the debut next month. In 1968, Robertson cofounded what has become the largest outdoor drama theater in the United States in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
• Twelve American students are the first participants in the Christian College Coalition’s semester-long Russian Studies Program. They will split their time between Moscow, Nizhni Novgorod, and Saint Petersburg, furthering their studies, interacting with Russians, and working with local churches.
• Geneva College president John H. White is the new chair of the World Relief Corporation of Wheaton, Illinois. World Relief is the relief-and-development arm of the National Association of Evangelicals.
• The International Bible Society’s (IBS) entire 10,000-copy first printing of a contemporary translation of the Bible in the Gujerati language has sold out. There are 45 million speakers of Gujerati residing in India’s state of Gujerat. Work on the new translation, sponsored and published by IBS, began in 1979.
• Death threats from suspected Muslim fundamentalists have led a Christian radio station in the Philippines to abandon plans for broadcasts in the Tausug dialect. The station, owned by the Far East Broadcasting Company, had suspended Tausug broadcasts in 1992 after Muslim terrorists gunned down a radio preacher, technician, and bystander.
• The Southern Baptist Convention’s abstinence campaign, True Love Waits, is being introduced by the Baptist World Alliance to its 38 million Baptist members in 150 countries.
