70 Child Abuse Accusations Against Churches Each Week—and Most Are Protestants

Protestants have their own clergy scandals Weblog is getting deluged with letters about a recent article on what the clergy abuse scandal means for evangelicals. Many readers didn’t like part of the article’s report, which suggested that clergy abuse of minors is less common in Protestant churches than it is in Roman Catholic parishes. Don’t blame the messenger: That’s what the interviewees and other reports said.

An Associated Press report, however, has an opposing view. “While data are sketchy, at least one expert believes the incidence of clergy molesting young children may be about as frequent—or infrequent—in Protestantism as it is in Catholicism,” reports AP religion writer Richard N. Ostling. The expert is Penn State historian Philip Jenkins, who says Catholic cases get exaggerated and Protestant cases get ignored. Jenkins admits he has no hard numbers to back up his case, but says neither do those who say it’s more common in Catholicism.

Actually, some hard numbers have surfaced from Christian Ministry Resources, the publisher of Church Law & Tax Report (the editor, Richard Hammar, was quoted in the earlier CT online article). “Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers,” summarizes The Christian Science Monitor. “Over the past decade, the pace of child-abuse allegations against American churches has averaged 70 a week.”

Weblog has had a lot on the clergy abuse scandals, but for regular updates, be sure to check out Ponyter.org’s Clergy Abuse Tracker and Yahoo’s full coverage area.

Burnhams spotted? Maybe. U.S. spy planes have located where American missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham are being held, southern military commander Lieutenant-General Roy Cimatu told reporters yesterday. Actually, that’s what he reportedly said. Today he says it was a 10-year-old child, not a spy plane, who spotted the missionaries. Monday’s New York Times reported that the Philippine military didn’t know where they were, so there is a question about whether the military is trying to save face. U.S. officials aren’t commenting on Cimatu’s report, says The Wichita Eagle. The newspaper, which deserves much praise for its vigilance on the Burnhams’ story, also has a report headlined “U.S. officials downplay Burnhams’ importance.” Sounds interesting (not to mention worrisome), but the link is dead.

Gulf News in the United Arab Emirates has another worrisome report: Martin and Gracia Burnham have been separated. Gracia is still on Basilan Island, says the paper, but Martin has been taken away with Abu Sayyaf leader Mujib Susukan. The paper’s source is a local who “claimed he saw the hostage when he delivered food to the Abu Sayyaf camp last month.”

Meanwhile, Abu Sayyaf is urging the Philippine government to negotiate. “This offer, perhaps the last one, should be an opportunity for the government to resolve this problem,” leader Abu Sulaiman told Radio Mindanao Network.

Minister says his dad, not James Earl Ray, killed Martin Luther King Jr. “My father was the main guy” who shot Martin Luther King, says the Rev. Ronald Denton Wilson of New Covenant Church in Graham, Florida. “It wasn’t a racist thing. He thought Martin Luther King was connected with communism, and he wanted to get him out of the way.” He says his announcement’s timing with the 34th anniversary of the assassination is only coincidental, and that he’s coming forward now to “cleanse my soul. … I’ve carried this weight for a long time.” The FBI is investigating, and meanwhile Wilson has become a media celebrity, reports The Gainesville (Fla.) Sun.

Holy Land violence:

A bishop unafraid to make enemies | Boston’s Episcopal bishop Thomas Shaw attaining a certain notoriety for supporting Palestinians (The Boston Globe)
Bullet quiets church’s bell | Bethlehem grieves for `a simple guy’ (Chicago Tribune)

Life ethics:

Euthanasia now legal in Holland | Becomes first country to allow doctors to kill patients with terminal diseases who are suffering “unbearably” (CNN)
Canadian team ‘supercharges’ adult stem cells | Offers hope for blood treatments, embryo controversy (National Post, Canada)
Australia’s Prime Minister gives green light to embryo research | Only existing embryos allowed (The Sydney Morning Herald)
Also: Churches split over Howard’s stem-cell go-ahead | Anglican church itself divided on issue (The Sydney Morning Herald)
Also: Archbishop regrets PM’s decision (The Sydney Morning Herald)
Va. Gov. Warner vetoes abortion ban | Says it lacked sufficient exceptions for women who encounter problems late in pregnancy. (Associated Press)
Planned Parenthood gets full-time chaplain | Methodist Monica Corsaro will provide pastoral counseling to patients and staff, act as liaison with the religious community and lobby on issues of reproductive rights (The Seattle Times)
Abortion protesters picket outside Wichita North High School | Operation Save America group plans to visit all the major high schools in city (The Wichita Eagle)
Let embryos be adopted, Sydney’s archbishop tells PM | John Howard is caught between church and the states as he tries to forge a politically viable position on stem cell research. (Sydney Morning Herald)

Money & business:

Signs of faith | Some owners make beliefs part of doing business (The Flint [Mich.] Journal)
For some companies, the first rule of business is the Golden Rule | Some companies call it values-driven leadership. Others talk about workplace spirituality. But all of them say they’re simply following good business practices: treating customers and employees how they want to be treated. And they say that focusing on a higher purpose has translated into higher profits. (The Dallas Morning News)

Other religions:

Christians disrupted pagan equinox party | Group loudly read Bible verses and blared Christian rock music (Los Angeles Daily News)
Rethinking religious tolerance | Respect for different traditions butts up against concern about their views on women (The Christian Science Monitor)
Americans awaken to a new tolerance | As worshipers grapple in aftermath of 9-11, interfaith services open hearts and minds (The Detroit News)
Toward theology in dialogue | We must speak about religion honestly, but the discussion will be meaningless unless we know what we ourselves believe. (Bill Tammeus, Kansas City Star)
Beyond belief | American Atheists president Ellen Johnson talks about the right to freedom from religion (The Boston Globe)
Mission impossible? | In a major blow to Jewish evangelism, Jews for Jesus has allegedly lost millions in bad investments. But this Friday, they return as fierce as ever with the largest international campaign in their history. Will their financial woes affect their mission? (Jewsweek)

Science & health:

Church attendees live longer, researchers say | Study of Alameda County adults probably can be applied to the entire United States, its authors say in report (Contra Costa [Calif.] Times)
Religious worship ‘eases mental health woes’ | Psychiatric patients who worship report reduced depression, alcohol abuse (Vancouver Sun)

Bible:

Gospels possibly defense of St. Paul to Romans | The Bible books of Luke and Acts were written to defend St. Paul’s missionary work in the face of Roman persecution, according to a new theory. (The Washington Times)
Time to rethink the miracle worker | In its current form, Christianity is incompatible with science and out of touch with modern life. (Bob Douglas, The Canberra [Australia] Times)

Missions & ministry:

Seeking new ways to make difference | Former missionary struggles to find niche back in the United States (The Florida Times Union, Jacksonville)
Calvin College athletes offer a hand at local mission store (Advance Newspapers)
Group goal to aid ministries | Faith-based coalition will help find grant money (The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville)
Aitken to support persecuted Christians | Former British Cabinet minister who survived disgrace, divorce, bankruptcy and jail and then spent two years at a theological college, has joined the board of Christian Solidarity Worldwide (The Times, London)

Clergy:

Vacant pulpits | A church leader is not something churchgoers can take for granted these days. (The Miami Herald)
Foundations of faith | ‘I gave her my cross, kissed her for the last time, and that was it’ (The Daily News, Halifax, N.S., Canada)
Priest stripped of powers is missing | Pastor accused of filing false report (The Baltimore Sun)
Interfaith board quits after airport chaplain’s job loss | Halifax International Airport chaplain Sally Budge claims she’s been as good as fired, for no reason, from the job she adores (The Halifax News, N.S., Canada)
Clergy exemption for home backed (The Washington Times)
Also: Bid gains to save clergy’s tax break | Bill would protect parsonage exemption (McClatchy)
On a crusade for peace | New Episcopal Bishop Jon Bruno knows the costs of violence firsthand (Los Angeles Times)

Worship wardrobes:

Divine dress-up | Some families are doing First Holy Communion in a big and fancy way. Roman Catholic officials plead for simplicity and spirituality. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
An order of worship: bare nothing but the soul | For many women, there remains an unspoken code to church dressing, and at no point in the year is that code in greater evidence than on Easter (The New York Times)

Pop culture:

Jars of Clay | Christian Band Goes Light on Dogma for New Album (Weekend Edition, NPR)
Also: Keeping the faith | Jars of Clay’s latest album may be ticket back into mainstream (The Orlando Sentinel)
Catholics’ anger at mad TV image | A Catholic group has launched a campaign to challenge the portrayal of churchgoers in television drama programmes as mad and morally suspect. (The Sunday Times, London)
New film clones Jesus | Revelation, a British movie, stars Terence Stamp, Derek Jacobi (Evening Standard, London)
Less sex and violence on TV? | A watchdog group’s survey says yes (Austin [Tex.] American-Statesman)
‘I don’t care if people think I’m a wimp’ | Jim Caviezel doesn’t like doing sex scenes—he wants to save himself for his wife. (The London Independent)
Jesus comic book blasted | Austrian book shows him surfing rather than walking on water and getting high on incense fumes (SAPA)
Pulpit fiction | One is an ex-hack who has ghost-written biographies for basketball stars. The other is a preacher who believes the end is nigh. Together, they are the publishing phenomenon of America—and now big players in movieland. (The Guardian, London)
Management of Christian label changes | Word Entertainment moves under Warner Bros. Nashville (Associated Press)
Rocker comes out of the closet | King’s X singer Doug Pinnick leaves Christianity, embraces homosexuality (Religion News Service)

Soccer:

Is African soccer the realm of spirits and deities? | Teams pay witchdoctors to make sure team members are not “crossed” (The East African, Nairobi, Kenya)
Korean churches declare war on ‘Red Devils’ | Worried that the term ‘Red Devils’ has connotations with Satanism that would dishonor South Korea, church groups have re-launched a campaign to change the name of the national football team (CNN)
Also: Belgium to keep Red Devils nickname | South Korean church groups have complained (ESPN)
No sex please for this footy [soccer] star | Australian Jason Stevens advocates celibacy in a new book (Sydney Morning Herald)

Other sports:

Christian players sometimes struggle with salary issues | Money and love of it are two different things, say athletes (Jeffrey Flanagan, Kansas City Star)
Flores learns toughness at church | Heavyweight boxing champ says work as Mormon missionary “makes you grow up very fast” (Associated Press)

Politics & law:

The left’s marriage problem | Helping poor people navigate marriage is not the same thing as putting old-fashioned pressure on middle-class girls to get hitched (Editorial, The Washington Post)
Minister announces for Tenn. governor | Nashville minister Edwin Sanders will run as independent (The Knoxville News-Sentinel)
Virginia appeals court to decide whether grace at naval academy is legal (Fox News)
In Pa. governor’s race, a Democratic divide between conservatives and liberals | Campaign may presage national split (The Washington Post)
Council reviews church curbs | Rockville, Md. leaders say they are reconsidering plans to curb expansion on residential land by churches and other institutions and limit their ability to rebuild damaged buildings, noting outrage from clergy and civic leaders last month. (The Washington Times)
Pulpits and politics | There’s no denying that allowing churches to discuss candidates would blur the line between church and state, a separation maintained to protect both institutions (Editorial, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.)
‘Choose Life’ auto tags get court boost | Federal appeals court dismissed a challenge to a Louisiana program that uses $25 from each specialty license plate sold to help fund adoptions. (The Washington Times)

Religion & violence:

Delivering us from evil | What Christians have wrought. (Dave Shiflett, National Review Online)
Resurrecting the lessons of Good Friday | If we want to honor the memory of Jesus, we need to discuss the kind of powers that are still killing people in the name of God (Barry J. Robinson, The Toronto Star)
The real history of the crusades | The general portrayal of the crusades as a series of holy wars against Islam led by power-mad popes and fought by religious fanatics is wrong. (Thomas F. Madden, Crisis)
Man shoots himself in parish house of St. Patrick’s | Priest who tried to counsel the man and ended up being threatened escaped serious injury (The New York Times)
Georgia pastor leads service for victims of church attack | Roughly 300 people, including diplomats and foreign dignitaries, attended the service for slain members of the Protestant International Church (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Tony Campolo criticizes war on terrorism | “It’s going to set missions back a thousand years,” says sociology professor (Biblical Recorder)

Pope John Paul II:

A weary shepherd | As Rome struggles to restore confidence in its clergy, the 81-year-old pope is ailing. Inside the Vatican (Newsweek)
Pope calls for world prayer on Middle East Sunday (The New York Times)
Vatican denies knee surgery planned (Associated Press)
Vatican confirms Pope travel in May | Ailing pontiff scheduled to visit Azerbaijan and Bulgaria (Associated Press)

New Mexico chapel:

Digging for miracles | N.M. chapel’s good earth sown with pilgrims’ faith (The Denver Post)
A sacred sanctuary wards off bulldozers | As sprawl gobbles up old New Mexico towns, a church known for healing receives its own miracle. (Los Angeles Times)

Deaths:

Anti-apartheid crusader Father Basil dies (SAPA)
Mexico’s “Mister Evangelical,” Juan IsÁis dies | Known for evangelistic efforts throughout Latin America (Latin America Mission News Service)

Abuse news:

Church finds sex abuse has no guaranteed cure | Programs help some priests, but not others (Chicago Tribune)
Catholics: Church in midst of a ‘crisis’ | Handling of scandal stirs anger, but poll finds strong faith (The Washington Post)
Catholic Church’s priest abuse crisis tests school policies, educators’ faith (Education Week)
Former pastor gets 32-month term (Los Angeles Times)
L.A. assistant pastor sentenced (Associated Press)
Priest charged in boy’s rape | Extradition of Father Ferraro to Boston, in a case two decades old, adds to the furor over sex abuse. (Los Angeles Times)
New York gets a list of priests in abuse files | The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York gave the Manhattan district attorney a list of all its priests who have been accused of abusing minors. (The New York Times)
Atlanta diocese reveals abuse claims | Reports say six priests sexually abused boys over the last 13 years, and diocese paid $31,250 in church funds to settle four claims. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Polish priest: Officials knew charge about archbishop | Priests and lay Catholics first expressed concern to bishops in late 1999, but church officials sided with their superior, says report (Associated Press)
Priest treatment unfolds in costly, secretive world | Psychiatrists, church trade misdeed charges (The Boston Globe)
Lawyer plans to go after Vatican | Attorney Jeffrey Anderson said he will file suits that accuse the Holy See, two religious orders, and the dioceses of Portland, Ore., Chicago and St. Petersburg, Fla., of conspiring to hide two abusive clergymen by moving them across state and national lines. (Associated Press)
Priest ousted amid sex charges | Second Metro Detroit priest in less than a week to leave a parish over allegations of sexual misconduct (The Detroit News)
No longer a lone voice crying | A Catholic hears vindication in scandal’s growing chorus (The Washington Post)

Abuse opinion:

Victims crushed in a priestly silence | There goes another round of Sunday offerings. (Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times)
Unlike Mahony, Brown knows the virtues of disclosure | When Tod Brown came to Orange County in mid-1998, he surely never thought part of his legacy would be how he responded to the explosive issue of sexual misconduct in the local Catholic clergy (Dana Parsons, Los Angeles Times)
Female priests provide answer | The Catholic priesthood problem will not be resolved until it becomes a good deal more “unmanly.” (Mary Zeiss Stange, USA Today)
Secrets, celibacy and the church | Pope John Paul II’s failure to confront the pathology of sexual secrecy is his papacy’s deepest flaw (Jason Berry, The New York Times)
Grabbing publicity by the collar | have seen widespread, well-deserved condemnation of the predators, not of their actions. (John Moody, The Washington Times)

Other articles of interest:

‘Sex misconduct’: evangelist sacked | Pat Mesiti was one of Australia’s most prominent and internationally lauded evangelists (The Sydney Morning Herald)
A new Christendom | We are currently living through one of the transforming moments in the history of religion worldwide (Philip Jenkins, The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Spiritual directors help to focus faith | Across the country, the practice of searching for God through the guidance of a trained counselor is seeing a renaissance. (The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.)
This fight’s over | Lessons from fiery fundamentalist Carl McIntire (Joel Belz, World)
Creed all about it | Why do we fear fundamentalists? Because we’re scared of believers (Cristina Odone, The Observer, London)
Southern Baptist Convention urges hotel chain boycott over bash | Howard Johnson hosted sadomasochism party (Associated Press)
Religious revival | If the intellectual fashion of the society around you is to stress materialism and to assert that there is no truth, only opinion, it is hardly surprising that young would-be rebels should seek spiritual answers and universal truths (Editorial, The National Post, Canada)
Church visitor causes a big flap | Wild turkey finds a perch on Beacon Hill rooftop (The Boston Globe)
Jewish believers in Jesus live between two solitudes | Messianic Jews feel isolated by both Jewish and the Christian communities (The Daily News, Halifax, N.S., Canada)
God beyond the glossies | Philippine religious publications have lately become more enterprising and energetic in competing with their secular counterparts for a slice of the burgeoning magazine market (Financial Times, London/The Daily Inquirer, Manila; also available here)