c. 1996 Religion News Service

Report charges China with suppressing Tibetan Buddhism

(RNS)-A new report released Monday (April 15) by the International Campaign for Tibet says Tibetan Buddhists are undergoing the worst wave of religious repression since martial law was imposed in 1989.

The Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet was formed in 1988 to promote human rights and democratic freedoms in Tibet.

The Chinese government has denied the accusations. On Tuesday (April 16), the AP quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang as saying the report was based on information from people whose”main goal was to create chaos.” According to the 89-page report,”A Season to Purge,”the years 1994 and 1995″witnessed a significant surge in Chinese government efforts to restrict the growth of religion in Tibet,”including controlling the number of Buddhist monks and nuns in each monastery and requiring government approval for a young Tibetan to enter monastic life.”Restrictions are placed on the substance of teachings, on who can give them, on who can receive them, on the size of the crowd receiving them, and so forth,”the report said.”Often monasteries must receive official permission from local authorities before a certain type of teaching or ceremony is performed.” It also said the government had imposed restrictions on new monasteries, arguing a sufficient number exists to”satisfy the daily religious needs of the masses.” The report was released to coincide with the meeting of the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission in Geneva. A debate on China’s human-rights record is expected during the commission’s meeting.

Many of the findings in the report have been corroborated by other human rights groups such as the London-based Amnesty International and the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

China has controlled Tibet since the early 1950s. Large pro-independence protests broke out in the late 1980s, and China imposed martial law in the capital of Lhassa in 1989.

New president ordained for Reorganized Latter Day Saints

(RNS)-For the first time in its 136-year history, the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints ordained a president outside the family of Mormon founder Joseph Smith Jr.

On Monday (April 15), the Independence, Mo.-headquartered denomination ordained W. Grant McMurray as president-prophet of the 245,000-member church.

McMurray, 48, a fourth-generation church member, formerly served as counselor to president Wallace B. Smith, a great-grandson of the church’s founder. Smith, 66, will have the title of president emeritus of the denomination.

The Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints is the largest of several splinter groups that emerged after the death of Joseph Smith in 1844. The main body of Mormons, as church members are called, moved to Utah under the leadership of Brigham Young.

Most of the Smith family, however, remained in the Midwest and began the reorganized church on the belief that Smith had designated his eldest son, Joseph Smith III, as the next prophet.”I understand all too well the symbolic transition this represents for the church,”the AP quoted McMurray as saying.”It is a heavy load to carry the burden for this new day to which the church is called.” Son of former Southern Baptist president plans nondenominational church

(RNS)-Andy Stanley, the son of former Southern Baptist Convention President Charles Stanley, said the church he is starting will not be a Southern Baptist congregation, at least for now.

Stanley said it was a difficult decision and is not a criticism of the Southern Baptist Convention. The new church, North Point Community Church in north Atlanta, meets two Sunday evenings a month with about 2,000 people.”I’m very grateful for the convention, and we will support financially Southern Baptist causes,”Stanley told Baptist Press, the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Stanley, 38, served on the staff of First Baptist Church of Atlanta, where his father is senior pastor, for 10 years. He left the church in August 1995 after disagreeing with his father’s continued leadership during a pending divorce. Since that time Charles Stanley’s wife, Anna, has withdrawn her divorce petition.

The younger Stanley said his church’s steering committee voted unanimously not to affiliate with a denomination.

Bill Willits, associate pastor of North Point Community Church, told RNS the decision to be a”nondenominational, conservative, evangelical church”reflects studies that show people are less concerned about denominational affiliation.”A good number of folks who are at North Point do not come from a Southern Baptist background or any Baptist background,”Willits said.”I think what’s critical to them is that Jesus Christ is making a difference in their life and that’s what we preach.” Stanley said he has not ruled out the possibility of affiliation with Southern Baptists at a later date.

Austria’s young people shunning belief in God

(RNS)-Although 83 percent of Austria’s 7.8 million people are members of the Roman Catholic Church or a Protestant denomination, 22 percent of the population calls itself atheist, according to the Information Service of the German Evangelical Church.

The news service, reporting on a poll conducted by the Gallup Institute for the Vienna-based church magazine”Kirche Intern,”also said that 35 percent of those under the age of 30 do not believe in God or a higher being.

According to the poll, only 3 percent of those under the age of 30 say they attend church every Sunday.

Quote of the day: Southern Baptist missionary Bradley Brown after being evacuated from violence-wracked Liberia.

(RNS)-Southern Baptist Convention missionary Bradley Brown spent 33 years on the mission fields of Liberia. On April 13, in an interview with Baptist Press, Brown reflected on his evacuation, remembering his mother asking him before her death in 1978 whether his work in Liberia was finished.”`Son, don’t you think your work in Liberia is finished now?’ I had to say to her then, `No Momma, the Lord hasn’t told me that.’ But there’s a strange feeling it is now. I’m afraid this was our farewell to Liberia.”

MJP END RNS