c. 2003 Religion News Service
Gallup: Nearly Three-Fourths of Teens Don’t Know Any Muslims
(RNS) Almost three-fourths of U.S. teens say they do not know any Muslims, the Gallup Organization has found.
Seventy-two percent of teenagers ages 13-17 said they did not know any Muslims, while 28 percent said they did, according to the latest Gallup Youth Survey, an Internet study based on questionnaire responses from about 500 youths.
The vast majority of teens surveyed said they agree with the statement “most Muslims around the world want peace,” but agreement with other statements about Muslims dropped dramatically.
For example, 65 percent agreed that most Muslims want peace, while 30 percent disagreed.
Asked how they felt about the statement “most Muslims around the world are accepting of other religions,” 61 percent disagreed and 34 percent agreed.
Sixty-seven percent of teens surveyed said they disagreed with the statement “Christians’ and Muslims’ religious beliefs are basically the same,” while 29 percent said they agreed with it.
The highest percentage of disagreements related to statements concerning equal rights and homosexuality.
Seventy-three percent disagreed with the statement “most Muslims around the world believe that women and men should have equal rights” while 23 percent agreed. Eighty percent disagreed with the statement, “most Muslims around the world are accepting of homosexuals” while 15 percent agreed.
The Gallup Youth Survey, using Internet methodology, involved a questionnaire completed by 517 respondents from Aug. 1-29, 2003. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 8 percentage points.
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Teen Views on Muslims
Know any Muslims:
Yes: 28 percent
No: 72 percent
Teen Views on Statements about Muslims
“Most Muslims around the world want peace.”
Agree: 65 percent
Disagree: 30 percent
“Most Muslims around the world are accepting of other religions.”
Agree: 34 percent
Disagree: 61 percent
“Christians’ and Muslims’ religious beliefs are basically the same.”
Agree: 29 percent
Disagree: 67 percent
(Source: Gallup Youth Survey)
_ Adelle M. Banks
Bill Introduced to `Protect’ Mealtime Prayers at Military Academies
WASHINGTON (RNS) A North Carolina congressman has introduced a bill that would allow students at the nation’s three military academies to conduct voluntary prayer before meals.
Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., said his bill will “ensure the protection of our future military heroes’ First Amendment rights” for students at West Point, the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy.
“I find it incredibly ironic that liberal organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union are attempting to take away the very freedoms that these students are willing to go to war to protect,” Jones said when he introduced the bill on Sept. 4.
Jones said the traditional student-led dinner prayers are “under attack” after the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in April that similar prayers at the Virginia Military Institute are unconstitutional.
The ACLU has notified the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., that it is “monitoring” its mealtime prayers, but has not filed formal legal action.
“If a student wants to give thanks before a meal, he or she should be allowed to do so without the ACLU coming after them,” said Jones, who has also introduced a bill that would allow tax-exempt churches to endorse political candidates.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Pope Visits Pompeii, Prays for Peace, Asks Prayers for Himself
UNDATED (RNS) An ailing Pope John Paul II, preparing to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his pontificate, made a brief visit to a shrine in the southern Italian town of Pompeii on Tuesday (Oct. 7), praying for peace in the world and asking for prayers for himself.
The 83-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff presided over a celebration centered on a meditation of the five “mysteries of light,” which he added to the Rosary prayer last October when he proclaimed his 25th year in office the Year of the Rosary.
In each mystery there was a special prayer for justice and peace in one of five continents.
“Christ is our peace. Let us turn our gaze to him in this start of a millennium already so tried by tensions and conflicts in all the regions of the world,” the pope said in his introduction to the meditation.
“Pray for me in this sanctuary today and always,” he said at the close of the ceremony.
John Paul, who is increasingly debilitated by Parkinson’s disease and arthritis, appeared stronger than in recent weeks. He showed no ill effects from an hourlong helicopter ride and was able to read his entire discourse without pause in a relatively strong and clear voice.
The pope will lead a weeklong celebration at the Vatican of his election on Oct. 16, 1978. They will include his beatification of Mother Teresa on Oct. 19 and his creation of 30 new cardinals at a Consistory on Oct. 21-22.
Some 30,000 people, including delegations of the unemployed and inmates released under guard from Naples’ Poggioreale Prison, gathered outside the 19th century Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompeii in the modern town for Tuesday’s ceremony. The facade of the church was built as a “monument to universal peace.”
The pope’s air force helicopter took off from the Vatican gardens and set down next to the ruins of Pompeii, an ancient Roman resort destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. He rode in an open car to the shrine and presided over the ceremony from a new gold and white throne on wheels.
The Rosary, he said, “goes to the heart of the Christian faith and appears very topical in the face of the challenges of the third millennium and the urgent commitment to the new evangelization.”
“At Pompei this topicality is made particularly obvious by the context of the ancient Roman city buried under the ashes of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. These ruins speak. They pose the decisive question of what is man’s destiny,” the pope said.
The modern town, with its church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, offers the resurrected Jesus in reply, he said.
The prayer for Europe, referring to the pope’s campaign to have a reference to the continent’s Christian roots inserted in the preamble of the new European Union’s constitution, asked that “the faith that has molded so many generations continue to be the main way to build the unity of its people in justice and in solidarity.”
The prayer for the Americas asked that the continent find in the gospel “the principal inspiration for its road of peace in true liberty and social justice” while in the prayer for Asia and the Middle East, a reader prayed: “May its ancient culture and religions open to tolerance and to reciprocal esteem and, above all, may the land of Jesus find again its longed for peace.”
_ Peggy Polk
Gordon-Conwell Seminary Launches Global Christianity Resources
(RNS) Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary will launch two new resources on global Christianity.
The multidenominational evangelical Protestant seminary in South Hamilton, Mass., will officially open the Center for the Study of Global Christianity on Thursday (Oct. 9). Seminary officials also will unveil the World Christian Database, an electronic version of the World Christian Encyclopedia, after Oct. 10. Hosted by the seminary, it will be located at http://www.globalchristianity.org on the World Wide Web.
The center will be directed by Todd M. Johnson, co-author with David B. Barrett of the second edition of the encyclopedia, which was published in 2001 by Oxford University Press. Barrett, editor of the first edition, and Peter F. Crossing, an Australian missiologist, also will work with the center.
The first level of the Web site will be free of charge, but the site also will feature a subscriber-based service for in-depth research. The database has received funding from churches, foundations and other donors, but center representatives declined to say how much it cost.
The new center will focus on the continual development of databases of the World Christian Encyclopedia, an extensive survey of Christianity that includes the religious breakdown of the population and the Christian denominations in the countries of the world.
Center staff also will analyze and publish original research related to church membership and evangelistic activities collected by denominations worldwide. Future plans of the center include the continued development of an international network of scholars on global Christianity, publications on the topic and assistance for churches who wish to apply the research to their strategic planning.
“The new Center for the Study of Global Christianity, which joins an existing consortium of seminaries, universities and centers in New England, will be extremely helpful to our faculty in their research initiatives,” said Walter C. Kaiser Jr., president of the seminary, in a statement.
“It will also be of great benefit to visiting religion scholars, graduate students, church leaders, missiologists and journalists seeking information and analysis on the global Christian movement.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
Quote of the Day: Rev. William Byrne of College Park, Md.
(RNS) “The thing that makes me mad is hearing 40- to 60-year-old Catholics talk about `Catholic guilt.’ I say that’s baloney. We’re the only ones who have sacramentalized the system of offering absolution and forgiveness for sin. Our emphasis is forgiveness.”
_ The Rev. William Byrne, Catholic chaplain at the University of Maryland’s College Park campus, speaking about his promotion of confession. He was quoted by The Washington Post.
DEA END RNS
