Court Upholds Prayer Ban before Games

In Georgia, it’s okay to open legislative sessions with prayer, but don’t try it at high-school football games. The U.S. Supreme Court justices, without comment, declined to review an appeals court decision that organized prayers before football games in Douglas County, Georgia, violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. School officials had appealed the decision, saying prayers are just as allowable at football games as at the opening of state legislative sessions. The Court’s refusal to hear the appeal lets stand the lower court ban on the prayers.

In another church/state case, the justices refused to block a lawsuit being brought against the Unification Church by two ex-members who say they were brainwashed into joining the group. The church had argued that the lawsuit violates its constitutional rights to the free exercise of religion. Several other church groups joined the Unification Church in raising concerns that the trial would set an inappropriate precedent of state interference in church affairs. “Absent violence or other [illegal] conduct, the state cannot leave unorthodox religious organizations to the not-so-tender mercies of a jury,” attorneys for the Unification Church said. The Court’s rejection of that argument now clears the way for a jury trial.

And, in a five-to-two decision, the Court ruled against the Church of Scientology in its dispute with the Internal Revenue Service. The Court said the IRS could deny income-tax deductions to church members for payments received for training services and auditing sessions designed to increase spiritual awareness. Writing for the majority, Justice Thurgood Marshall said such payments could not be deducted because they were given “in return for goods or services” and with the “expectation of [a] quid pro quo.”

On the abortion front, the Court let stand $88,000 in penalties against a Texas clinic charged with deceptive advertising. Because the clinic opposed abortion, yet advertised in the Yellow Pages under “Abortion Information and Services,” a state jury fined Mother and Unborn Baby Care of North Texas, Inc., and ordered that in future ads the clinic proclaim that it is not an abortion clinic and does not provide abortion referrals. Without comment, the Court turned down a review appeal from the clinic.

WORLD SCENE

ENGLAND

Graham Links Continents

Billy Graham’s “Mission 89” in London last month used satellite links to beam the crusade to 238 locations throughout the British Isles and to 28 African countries.

Total attendance at the London meetings was expected to exceed 200,000. Each satellite link in Britain was organized as a separate crusade, with a total of 5,500 churches involved throughout the nation. Live and delayed broadcasts in Africa reached an estimated nightly audience of 23 to 30 million.

Graham noted a spiritual change in Britain since his first visit there in 1946. Then, he said, people thought technology would improve their lives. “Today there is a concern that materialism hasn’t brought the deep sense of satisfaction which people are looking for.”

POLAND

Religious Freedom on Rise

As Poland’s Solidarity political party continues to make gains, the church in Poland also is experiencing more freedom. Recently the Roman Catholic Church was officially granted legal status. And according to Konstanty Waisowski, president of the Polish Baptist Union, the fruits of the negotiations between Catholic and government officials will apply to all denominations in the country.

At the same time, a national chapter of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, the worldwide student organization with which InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is affiliated, has been officially registered in Poland. A full-time Polish student worker has been appointed.

EL SALVADOR

Peaceful Change of Power

For the first time in the history of El Salvador, power has passed from one elected leader to another. Alfredo Cristiani was sworn in as president on June 1, after winning elections the month before. Cristiani takes over a country brutalized by a decade of civil war that has left 70,000 dead. He hopes to help negotiate an end to the violence between government troops and left-wing guerrillas.

Meanwhile, the evangelical church continues to grow amid the political instability. According to CONESAL (Fraternity of Salvadoran Evangelicals), more than 22 percent of the country’s population can be considered evangelical. CONESAL says, however, the church in El Salvador remains in need of strong leadership and biblical training.

ALBANIA

Faith Out of Sight

Albania is described as the world’s worst abuser of religious liberty in a new human rights study carried out by the Puebla Institute, a private human rights monitoring group. “There is absolutely no institutionally sponsored public expression of faith of any kind in Albania today,” said the report, entitled Religion in a Fortress State.

There are no places of worship; all religious property remains confiscated; religious education is banned as are religiously sponsored hospitals and charitable institutions. The Puebla Institute reports, however, that Albanians secretly practice religion, holding worship services and baptizing children without the benefit of clergy.

Albania was once a haven for religious minorities. But beginning in 1944, the Communist Party sought to replace religion with communism and a personality cult based on party leader Enver Hoxha, who died in 1985. Albania recently resumed diplomatic ties with some Western nations and granted visas to several American clergy. This has raised faint hopes of a freer climate, according to the institute, but “this liberalization is so slight as to be almost undetectable.”

SUDAN

Relief Convoys Get Through

Warring parties in the African nation of Sudan have agreed to allow the delivery of food to areas most affected by the civil strife. Government troops and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) agreed to allow the United Nations to deliver food, using a plan that could become a model of cooperation for other areas of conflict, such as Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

Heavy rains have slowed “Operation Lifeline—Sudan,” but already 60,000 tons of a targeted goal of 100,000 tons have reached southern Sudan. Millions of civilians in southern Sudan are believed to be facing starvation. More than 200,000 starved to death during last year’s massive famine.

World Vision International plans to distribute 18,000 tons of food in the Sudan in the near future. After being expelled from the country by the government in 1988, the relief agency has based its operations in nearby Kenya and is now working through Norwegian Peoples’ Aid.

WORLDWIDE

Believers Gain Ground

The ratio of non-Christians to “Great Commission Christians” has been shrinking steadily and is now only four to one, according to missiologist Ralph Winter. The category of Great Commission Christians refers to “those believers who take seriously the Great Commission,” and is being used by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization’s Statistics Task Force. In the year A.D. 100, the ratio was 360 to 1.

Writing in Mission Frontiers, the bulletin of the U.S. Center for World Mission, Winter bases his conclusions on figures published in the World Christian Encyclopedia. Winter has also revised his figure for “unreached people groups,” a category of missions statistic which he pioneered, to a best estimate of 12,000. Figures had been quoted as high as 16,000 and as low as 3,000 for those groups with no indigenous witnessing church.

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