The Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) has challenged Western fundamentalist Christians to reconsider their “unconditional support to the State of Israel,” asking for donations of money for food, medicines, and relief for needy Palestinian families.
In an appeal issued from the church council’s headquarters in Limassol, Cyprus, general secretary Gabriel Habib called on Christians to express “solidarity with the Palestinian people.” He also urged Jews to “break the ideology of fear and trauma,” which he says underlies Israel’s current policy of military actions against Palestinians.
Arabs living in Israeli-controlled territories in the West Bank and Gaza have been demonstrating for more autonomy. Israel’s military response has sparked worldwide controversy.
The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and United Church of Christ were among the first U.S. denominations to respond to Habib’s appeal, urging their conference and regional ministers to spread the word to local pastors.
PROSTITUTION
Children Sold For Sex
Children around the world are being sold at an alarming rate, according to a detailed report in South magazine, a British publication. While poverty appears to be the culprit, the preferred trade is prostitution.
For example, in Hong Kong and Bangkok, girls are sold to pimps for a few dollars and are then locked into prostitution. Many mothers sell their children to local prostitution rings where a child brings in five times more money than adult prostitutes.
In Paris, 5,000 boys and 3,000 girls work as prostitutes, and in Latin America a girl of 12 can earn from prostitution more than ten times the amount an adult can earn from a day’s factory work. Organized child prostitution also exists in Brazil and Peru.
LEBANON
Missionaries Protest Ban
Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board President R. Keith Parks has asked Secretary of State George P. Schultz to lift his ban on missionaries in Lebanon. Last year, the U.S. government ordered all U.S. citizens, including missionaries, to leave Lebanon because of continuing strife there.
Parks says several of his 24 missionaries to Lebanon want to return. “If they lift the ban, we’ll be on the first boat back to Lebanon,” vowed Pete Dunn, currently on furlough. Some missionaries have tried to continue the work in Lebanon by transferring to Cyprus and working in radio and literature production. And in an ironic twist, some were reassigned to Gaza, another Middle East area stricken by violence in recent weeks.
In his letter to Schultz, Parks asked that missionaries be allowed to take risks for their faith, just as Schultz and other government leaders have for “those ideals in which you believe.”
AUSTRALIA
Door To Door Down Under
Christians in Australia plan to use their country’s bicentennial as a springboard for personal evangelism. With church attendance in Australia lagging at only 18 percent of the population, church leaders there admit they face a daunting challenge.
The Australian Evangelical Alliance hopes to rely on prayer and house-to-house visits with a bicentennial gift of a New Testament. It will also sponsor 100 days of prayer between Lent and Pentecost, culminating in a Pentecost Sunday of Prayer for the evangelization of Australia.
VENEZUELA
Paper Attacks Evangelicals
In a front-page article appearing in the leading Venezuelan newspaper, El Nacional, prominent writer Rosita Caldera reported criticism from Roman Catholics that evangelicals are guilty of aggressiveness and fanaticism. But according to evangelical leaders in Venezuela, rapid growth among Protestants has put the Roman Catholic establishment on the defensive, thus the public attack.
Quoting the Roman Catholic Episcopal Council of Bishops, the article charged evangelicals with proselytizing and constantly attacking Catholicism. By doing so, it said, they are “causing confusion, defaming the church and its hierarchies, and attacking Catholic worship, Mary, the saints, even God.” It also accused evangelicals of imposing a foreign culture on Venezuelans.
According to Bill Taylor, World Evangelical Fellowship missions committee executive secretary, Protestant growth in Venezuela has nearly doubled within the past two years. Late last year, the Venezuelan government closed a New Tribes Mission school because of its “non-Venezuelan orientation.”
THE VATICAN
Modern Scholarship Panned
The Vatican’s chief theologian, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, traveled to New York and delivered a 50-minute attack on modern biblical scholarship.
The prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith chided modern scholars of the Bible for inserting their presuppositions into their study of Scripture. He blamed contemporary biblical scholarship for diluting the teaching of the church.
Unlike some Protestant conservatives, the cardinal endorsed the use of the “his torical-critical method” of Bible study. But he said that method was not as “scientific” as its exponents claimed.
Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.
Our digital archives are a work in progress. Let us know if corrections need to be made.
While we pray for peace, we need moral clarity about this war.
We’ve got little information on Jesus’ appearance and personality. But that’s the way God designed it.españolFrançais
Do activists often invest their work with religious significance? All the more reason for Christians to be discerning co-laborers.
