c. 1997 Religion News Service

Christian retail shoppers often white women in 30s or 40s

(RNS) A new survey shows that the average shopper at a Christian retail store is a white woman, between the ages of 30 and 49, and likely to spend between $51 and $250 a year on Christian products.

About half of the shoppers consider themselves Baptist or nondenominational. Most of the shoppers are women, but 23 percent are men.

The 1997 CBA Customer Profile and Satisfaction Survey was sponsored by the CBA, formerly known as the Christian Booksellers Association, and the CBA Foundation.

The survey also found more than half of Christian retail shoppers attend organized Christian events between four and 10 times a month. Seventy-eight percent of the customers shop at Christian stores at least once every three months and 44 percent visit the stores once a month or more.

Sixty-one percent of the customers have a specific product in mind to purchase when they arrive at the store. About 43 percent come to the stores planning to purchase a gift, including books, apparel, Bibles, music and software.

The survey results are based on 12,347 completed forms that were distributed through 96 stores in December and January. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percent.”The survey confirms that when people want to purchase a Christian book, gift, Bible or music, they overwhelmingly choose to purchase these items in a CBA store rather than another outlet,”said Bill Anderson, CBA’s president and CEO.

In a second survey, sponsored by CBA and CBA Foundation, randomly selected Americans were asked about their purchase of religious materials. Fifty-one percent said they purchase such materials and about 43 percent said they buy them at a store that specializes in those items.

The 1997 General Population Survey was based on 628 responses to a survey that was mailed in early 1997. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

The CBA plans to launch a five-year project aimed at doubling the sales at its 3,500 member stores when it meets for its international convention in July in Atlanta.

Coalition launches fund-raising drive for burned churches

(RNS) The Congress of National Black Churches (CNBC) plans to deposit a total of $1.1 million in African-American-owned banks to challenge people in 10 cities to support its fund-raising drive to rebuild churches destroyed by arson.”This initiative signifies CNBC’s long-term commitment to rebuild churches and restore communities,”said CNBC Chairman Bishop Roy L.H. Winbush of the Church of God in Christ.”We want to establish relationships in the community that will help us to raise the rest of the funds needed to accomplish our mission.” In January, CNBC announced its Church Rebuilding and Arson Prevention and Education Initiative, which aims to address the rash of recent church fires by rebuilding structures and creating programs to foster multiracial and ecumenical harmony. The CNBC has received a $6 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, but the entire initiative is expected to cost $12.8 million.

CNBC spokeswoman Juliette Davis said a total of $1.1 million of the Lilly grant will be deposited in a designated fund at 11 banks to provide an incentive for more deposits from local communities. Each bank will receive $100,000. The banks are in selected communities where churches have burned or where the CNBC has strong representation.

Davis said the CNBC thinks the banks will benefit from the promotion while helping with the effort to assist burned churches and prevent future fires.”It’s showing that they’re conscientious about what’s going on in the community,”she said.

The banks are in New Orleans; Chicago; Atlanta (2); New York; Memphis, Tenn.; Detroit; Kansas City, Mo.; Washington; Columbia, S.C.; and Los Angeles.

The CNBC also is a partner with the National Council of Churches and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the National Rebuilding Initiative, which provides loans and other assistance to burned churches.

The CNBC is a coalition of eight African-American denominations, including the African Methodist Episcopal Church; the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church; the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church; the Church of God in Christ; the National Baptist Convention of America; the National Baptist Convention, USA; the National Missionary Baptist Convention of America; and the Progressive National Baptist Convention.

Baptist church shuts day care, wants women to stay home

(RNS) A Baptist church in northwest Arkansas has closed its day-care center because the church board believes God wants women to stay at home.

The decision has left 27 parents without day care and state officials are rapidly licensing another facility to take the place of the one at First Baptist Church of Berryville, the Associated Press reported.”This is not `Happy Days’ and we are not living in the 1950s,’ said Katrena Alexander, 44, who operates a manufacturing company with her husband.

Alexander’s daughter Keanna had attended the day care for a year before it shut its doors March 14.”I don’t know of too many people here who can survive on one person’s salary, especially if that salary is minimum wage,”Alexander said Thursday (April 3).”This is just something that shouldn’t have happened in this decade.” Board members of the First Baptist Church’s Corner Stone Day Care sent a letter Feb. 14 to parents announcing the church would close the center in the spring.

The church said in a later letter it was sensitive to the challenges of single parents but could not keep the center open because it was encouraging mothers to be employed outside the home.

Families could get by on one salary if they gave up”Big TVs, a microwave, new clothes, eating out and nice vacations,”the letter added.”God intended for the home to be the center of a mother’s world,”the church stated.”In Titus 2:5, women are instructed to be `discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good and obedient to their own husbands …'” The Arkansas Department of Human Services sped up the permitting process for the First Christian Church in Berryville so it could accept the 27 children.”We understand that the Baptist church felt women working outside of the house was a sin against God,”said Joe Quinn, department spokesman.”What we did was expedite getting a license for the other church because we know that in this day and age people are highly dependent on day care.”

Appeals court upholds firing of anti-gay civil rights commissioner

(RNS) A federal appeals court in San Francisco has upheld the 1993 firing of a Baptist pastor from the city human rights commission for admitting to reporters that he adheres to biblical admonitions against homosexuality.

A lawyer for the Rev. Eugene Lumpkin _ who is pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church _ said he was considering the possibility of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lumpkin was cornered about his biblical beliefs on two occasions by reporters during a time of national debate on whether open gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve in the military.

In a interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Lumpkin acknowledged that”the homosexual lifestyle is an abomination against God. So I have to preach that homosexuality is a sin.” Those comments prompted leaders in San Francisco’s powerful gay community to call for Lumpkin’s removal. At first Mayor Frank Jordan defended Lumpkin as one who had never taken anti-gay positions during his time on the Human Rights Commission.

But some days later, Lumpkin was asked by a TV reporter whether he believed the admonition in Leviticus that”a man who sleeps with a man should be put to death.”Though he tried to dodge the question, Lumpkin did acknowledge,”Sure, I believe; I believe everything the Bible sayeth.” Jordan fired Lumpkin the next day.

Lumpkin sued the city and Jordan in federal court, charging violations of state and federal anti-discrimination statutes. The suit also alleged the city had to show a”compelling interest”for firing Lumpkin.

But U.S. District Judge Fern Smith decided for the city, ruling that a government has greater leeway to curb the religious speech of an employee, especially speech that is antithetical to the employee’s workplace duties. And Smith ruled the law provides even less protection for religious speech of employees in policymaking positions.

The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco came to an almost identical conclusion.”Rev. Lumpkin’s statements explicitly condemning homosexuality as a sin and implicitly endorsing violence against homosexuals are not simply hostile to the Commission’s charge, they are at war with it,”the court held, in a decision written by Circuit Judge William A. Norris.”To be sure, when Rev. Lumpkin speaks as a private citizen, he has every right to preach that homosexuality is a sin and that Leviticus says that `a man who sleeps with a man should be put to death,'”Norris added.”But the First Amendment does not assure him job security when he preaches homophobia while serving as a city official charged with the responsibility of eliminating prejudice and discrimination.” Lumpkin’s attorney _ James D. Struck, a Modesto, Calif., lawyer who took the case pro bono for the Charlottesville, Va.-based Rutherford Institute _ said he is considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.”What our Ninth Circuit is telling us is that if you are among the millions of people who hold the traditional belief that homosexuality is a sin, … you’re homophobic,”Struck said.”It’s pretty scary for the Ninth Circuit to be engaged in that sort of politically correct name-calling,”and”a pretty

sad state of affairs for the First Amendment and Free Exercise.” Hunger hits close to 1 billion around the world

(RNS) Nearly 1 billion people around the world go to bed hungry or severely malnourished every night, according to a top State Department official.

Undersecretary of State Timothy Wirth said among the reasons for the hunger are declining global food reserves and increases in population. In addition, a richer China is forcing an increase in world food prices through expanded imports.

Wirth said it is”absolutely imperative”that countries work together to develop another agricultural advance similar to the”green revolution”30 years ago that prompted much higher yields of rice and helped feed Asia’s growing population.

Update: World Food Program increases its appeal for N. Korean aid

(RNS) The World Food Program issued a global appeal Friday (April 4) for $95 million to feed hungry children in North Korea, saying famine will strike the impoverished country if urgent supplies are not received.

Catherine Bertini, the U.N. agency’s executive director, said the organization had more than doubled its earlier request for $41 million.”The additional food aid, almost exclusively, will be directed to children under 6, and we will proceed to send food to every nursery and kindergarten throughout the country,”she said at a Seoul news conference, Reuters reported.

Children younger than 6 account for about 2.6 million people in the nation’s population of 23 million.

If emergency food aid does not arrive soon, Bertini predicted,”by summer large-scale malnutrition and deaths”would occur.

When she toured North Korea last month, Bertini said many children in nurseries had signs of malnutrition, including bloated stomachs and orange-tinted hair.”We visited people in their homes and saw almost no protein source _ no meat, no fish _ and saw empty cupboards and a very limited amount of food,”she said.

Bertini said North Korea would need 2.3 million tons of grain to prevent a famine.

Some help is on the way to the region. The South Korean Red Cross sent $1 million worth of vegetable seeds and food on Wednesday (April 2).

In addition, the United States has pledged $10 million to the World Food Program effort and South Korea has agreed to give $6 million.

Quote of the day: Matthew Craig, son of a Heaven’s Gate member

(RNS) As family members gathered Wednesday (April 2) at an Episcopal church in Durango, Colo., to remember John”Mickey”Craig, one of the 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate group that recently committed suicide, his son made this observation:”Dad had two lives _ one as Mickey Craig, and the other as `the Seeker.’ I’d like to tell him, `Dad, you don’t need a spaceship to find God. Just look deep within yourself.'”

MJP END RNS