c. 2000 Religion News Service
Who You Gonna Call? Research Finds at Many Churches, No One
(RNS) No one’s picking up the phone at 40 percent of the nation’s Protestant churches, a survey by the Barna Research Group has found.
The Ventura, Calif.-based marketing research firm found that researchers could never contact a person at 40 percent of churches called even when multiple callbacks _ as many as 12 per church _ were placed.
And at 44 percent of the churches where there was no human contact, there also was no answering machine to take a message.
Barna found it took an average of 2.1 telephone calls to reach a person at a Protestant church during regular weekday business hours. One-third of those calls were answered on the first attempt but a person was not reached until at least the fourth try at one out of every 10 churches that did eventually pick up the phone.
Mainline churches were found to be a bit more responsive than evangelical ones, with a person answering the phone 73 percent and 66 percent of the time, respectively. Mainline churches ranged from someone answering the phone at 83 percent of Episcopal churches to a phone being picked up at 66 percent of American Baptist churches. Evangelical churches with the most accessibility were Christian & Missionary Alliance (100 percent, based on a small sample) and nondenominational evangelical churches (80 percent).
African-American churches had the lowest response rate among the various categories of congregations called. But, as in other categories, there was a wide range of responsiveness among black churches _ from 76 percent of Missionary Baptist churches to 9 percent of African Methodist Episcopal Zion churches.
Researchers found someone answered the phone at 53 percent of Pentecostal and charismatic churches called.
They also learned that the larger the church, the more likely there was someone available to answer the phone _ and to pick up on the first call. Calls were answered on the first try at 70 percent of the churches with 250 or more adult attenders, compared to 55 percent of churches drawing 100 to 250 adults and 44 percent of churches with fewer than 100 adults attending.
George Barna, president of the research firm, said the statistics revealed the inaccessibility of some churches.
“In a world where people are extremely busy and are suspicious of the practical value of churches, they are not likely to make three or four calls to a church before they get to speak to a human being,” he said in a statement.
“If churches really want to help people, they have to be accessible. When we make it difficult for people to get our attention, we send a negative message about the heart of the church while also training them to look elsewhere during their times of need.”
The data was based on telephone interviews in June and July of a nationwide random sample of 3,764 Protestant churches. The study had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Thief Wants $5,400 for Return of Papal Skull
(RNS) A thief who stole the skull of a 14th century pope from his birthplace in Spain has sent a ransom note to the town’s mayor.
“I honestly believe this is not a joke,” Javier Vicente Ines, mayor of Illeuca, told the Associated Press on Tuesday (Aug. 22).
Ines said the ransom note was the second letter he had received since the cranium of Benedict XIII was stolen in April from an exhibit in the town of Sabinan.
The Spanish pope succeeded Clement VII in 1394 and held the papacy during the turbulent Great Schism when several popes laid claim to his title.
After Benedict’s death in 1423 his remains were kept in Illeuca, but French soldiers destroyed most of them _ except for the skull _ during the Spanish War for Independence in the early 19th century, according to the French press.
Vicente Ines said he received the first letter late in July, accompanied by photos of the skull encased in the glass urn in which it had been exhibited in Sabinan.
He received the second ransom note earlier this month. The note demanded $5,400 for the skull’s return and suggested the exchange take place in Zaragoza city. But no one showed up to collect the money when the mayor, armed with a hidden microphone and watched from afar by plainclothes police, arrived.
Vicente Ines said his town would like to see the pope’s skull returned but cannot pay money for the return of stolen property.
“Besides its historical significance, we attach sentimental value to this skull,” he said.
Millennium Peace Summit Criticized by Evangelicals
(RNS) The upcoming Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders is coming under attack by evangelicals, who say they have not been invited to the historic summit, and that the meeting will be anti-family and pro-abortion.
The Aug. 28-31 summit will draw more than 1,000 religious leaders from around the world to New York to discuss paths toward peace. Every major faith tradition in the world will be represented.
The summit will also see the birth of the International Advisory Council of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, a United Nations advisory panel that will work toward peace in troubled regions around the world.
Some religious conservatives, who have long questioned the global nature of the United Nations, say the conference is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” of “leftist” and “anti-life, anti-family politics in the robes of religion.”
Robert Maginnis, vice president for foreign policy for the Washington-based Family Research Council, said the summit’s agenda will include “the promotion of birth control methods, environmental extremism and `New Age’ ideals of globalized religion.”
Maginnis also criticized the summit for not inviting the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of the world’s 15 million Tibetan Buddhists. A host of critics have said summit organizers bowed to Chinese pressure to exclude the Nobel Peace Prize-winning spiritual leader.
“The political agenda of the summit sponsors, combined with (U.N.) Secretary General (Kofi) Anan’s deference to the communist government of China, are proof positive that the Millennium Summit will do little to strengthen the cause of religious freedom around the world and will more likely offend the values of the pro-life and pro-family faithful,” Maginnis said.
Maginnis also said the country’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, would not be officially represented at the conference because organizers did not extend invitations to evangelicals.
But one prominent Southern Baptist, Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of evangelist Billy Graham, was invited and will be attending the conference, according to her spokeswoman, Nancy Guthrie.
South Dakota Priest Receives Catholic Missionary Award
(RNS) A Roman Catholic missionary organization has named an 85-year-old South Dakota priest as the top U.S. missionary for his 60 years of work with Native Americans.
The Rev. Richard Jones, a Jesuit priest on the Rosebud Reservation, will be given the Lumen Christi Award by Catholic Extension on Sept. 18.
Jones has worked in South Dakota with the Lakota Indians since 1963. He began his ministry teaching at a mission school and then taught in Milwaukee and St. Louis before returning to the reservation in 1963.
“We have no problems here,” Jones said of his work on the reservation, “only challenges.”
With an interest in education, Jones oversaw the implementation of a GED program on the reservation, and also oversaw spiritual renewal in several South Dakota towns. In the 1970s, Jones began Charismatic Renewal meetings, which still continue.
Catholic Extension, a private nonprofit group that supports Catholic missions in the United States, will award Jones a $10,000 prize, and his diocese of Rapid City will receive $25,000.
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Magazine Lists Top Christian Biographies of the Century
(RNS) Corrie ten Boom’s “The Hiding Place” and C.S. Lewis’ “Surprised by Joy” tied for first place in the list of top Christian biographies/autobiographies of the century recently released by Christian Reader magazine.
The bimonthly magazine published the list in its September/October issue.
“I’ve learned just how interesting people and their life stories are,” said editor Bonne Steffen. “That’s why Christian Reader decided to compile a list of the best Christian biographies/autobiographies of this past century.”
The rest of the list: “The Gulag Archipelago” by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn; “Born Again” by Charles Colson; “The Cross and the Switchblade” by David Wilkerson; “Through Gates of Splendor” by Elisabeth Elliot; “A Severe Mercy” by Sheldon Vanauken; “The Seven Storey Mountain” by Thomas Merton; “Power of the Powerless,” a biography of Oliver de Vinck, a severely handicapped man, by his brother Christopher de Vinck; “Something Beautiful for God,” a biography of the celebrated nun Mother Teresa by Malcolm Muggeridge; and a tie for 10th place: “A Prophet With Honor,” a biography of evangelist Billy Graham by Walter Martin, and “Here I Stand,” a biography of Protestant reformer Martin Luther by Roland Bainton.
Quote of the Day: Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.
(RNS) “I don’t know how any religious leaders or any person of faith can be supportive of the death penalty. … Only the Almighty has the power to take the life of another person. We don’t give it and no state, no government should be in the position of taking life.”
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., quoted in an interview in the Aug. 22 report of Associated Baptist Press, an independent news service.
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