c. 2005 Religion News Service
Christian Colleges Remember Children on World AIDS Day
(RNS) Students at Christian colleges put a human face on World AIDS Day Thursday (Dec. 1) by carrying small photos of children orphaned by the disease.
The “Lives Are at Stake” campaign was held on about 30 Christian campuses across the country. Students asked classmates to carry the children’s photos as they walked through campus, or to wear the photos around their necks.
The Christian relief organization World Vision mobilized the campaign, which began in 2003.
Large numbers _ like the 14 million children orphaned and vulnerable due to AIDS _ are hard to connect with, said student leader Elliot Johnson. But he said the 700 individual photos he ordered for Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minn., helped personalize the crisis.
“When you really understand and get your head around the enormity of the issue, it’s really hard to ignore it,” said Johnson, 20.
Seventy students out of Northwestern’s 1,700 also wore orange T-shirts that said “orphan” to simulate the 20 percent of children in sub-Saharan Africa who have lost their parents to AIDS.
Students directed participants to World Vision’s Web site, where they can contribute to advocacy and fundraising efforts. They also hope classmates will take photos back to their dorm rooms and pray for those children all year.
“We’re big on prayer,” said Johnson.
The son of missionaries, Johnson started Northwestern’s AIDS advocacy program in September.
“I’m just your typical college student,” he said, but after a training session his “heart was just broken” at the pervasiveness of AIDS. He wanted to raise awareness, including the fact that so many women and children are infected.
“It’s not just the people who are doing bad things, like the church likes to think,” he said.
Steve Haas, a spokesman for Seattle-based World Vision, said Christian churches have long shunned discussion of AIDS due to stigma. But when it comes to college advocacy, he said, “there’s nothing on secular campuses like what’s happening on Christian campuses.”
Students have parlayed their campus activism into awareness campaigns in their churches, volunteer work in AIDS hospices and international relief work, Haas said.
_ Nicole LaRosa
U.S. War on Terrorism Criticized at Conference on Human Rights
WASHINGTON (RNS) Elected officials and religious leaders from more than 40 countries ended a four-day conference Thursday (Dec. 1) that pushed for government respect of religious freedom and other human rights, even while fighting terrorism.
Some participants got specific, alleging the U.S. war on terrorism and its involvement in Iraq violate international law.
“We cannot be selective in our morality by condemning terrorism on the one hand and ignoring international law with the kind of terror that we’re seeing in Iraq,” said Mewa Ramgobin, a member of South Africa’s parliament. “We must be guarded (against replacing) one kind of domination by another.”
The debate on religion, law and terrorism at the Interparliamentary Conference on Human Rights and Religious Freedom was a forum where elected representatives and religious leaders of different faiths discussed ways to influence policy in their respective countries.
Winnie Nxumalo-Magagula, a senator from Swaziland, said there was a risk that governments’ efforts to combat terrorism could violate the religious freedom of those they are fighting against.
Par Axel Sahlberg, a member of the Swedish parliament, asked whether the war on terrorism was being conducted under international law. If so, torture and other treatment of prisoners must follow legal guidelines, Sahlberg said.
“There is a problem when a nation like the United States does something that violates human rights,” he said.
Sahlberg’s list of U.S. violations included abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
“For members of the parliaments from around the world to be asking us these questions shows a lack of moral clarity on the part of the American people,” said Joseph K. Grieboski, president of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy, a Washington-based think tank. “Their questions are forcing us to move forward on very difficult moral questions about our own government, our values and our actions.”
Sahlberg, who is also an ordained minister of the United Methodist Church, criticized American religious communities for keeping silent on U.S. tactics against terrorism and in Iraq.
“We’re really not actively engaged in discussing this issue,” said Deborah Fikes, executive director of the Ministerial Alliance of Midland, Texas, a coalition of mostly evangelical organizations. “There is a hesitancy to talk about (terrorism) because we don’t want to look like we’re criticizing Islam.”
_ Kabuika Kamunga
Vatican Decries Attack on Catholics in China
VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican has expressed “grief and disapproval” over reports detailing an assault on Roman Catholic nuns and the arrest of priests in China.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls condemned the acts in a statement released Wednesday (Nov. 30) after the Vatican-affiliated news agency Asianews reported that 16 Franciscan nuns were severely beaten in Xian province by a band of 40 “thugs.”
Five of the nuns are still hospitalized with serious injuries from the Nov. 23 assault, Asianews said.
“The violence used in Xian against defenseless nuns can only be condemned in the strongest of terms,” Navarro-Valls said.
According to Asianews, the attackers told the nuns they were sent by local government officials to force the nuns from a Catholic school facility slated for demolition in preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics, to be held in China.
Navarro-Valls said the Vatican was seeking clarification on the assault and on the arrest of six priests in Zhengding province Nov. 18, which was also reported by Asianews.
“The detainment of the six priests of Zhengding, as with previous cases involving various priests in other locations, is the cause of serious concern,” Navarro-Valls said. “As on previous occasions, the reasons for the coercive measures taken against them are unknown.”
The reports come amid a perceived thaw in relations between the Vatican and the Chinese government, which severed ties with the Holy See in 1951 after China’s atheist Communist Party took control of the government.
An estimated 5 million Chinese Catholics belong to the state-controlled church, which the Vatican considers schismatic. An underground church loyal to Rome is believed to have at least 8 million faithful.
The Vatican is making a strong push to mend ties between the two churches and consolidate its influence over Chinese Catholics.
The Holy See has also said it is willing to re-establish diplomatic ties with Beijing on the condition that religious rights are expanded. But China says diplomatic relations with the Vatican are not possible as long as Rome maintains diplomatic ties to dissident Taiwan.
_ Stacy Meichtry
Editors: To obtain a photo of Daugherty for this story, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com.
Pastor Punched During Service Gets Encouragement
(RNS) An Oklahoma pastor punched in the face during a worship service says he has been touched by an outpouring of sympathy and encouragement.
The national media coverage “has been one of the most amazing things we’ve ever seen in our lives,” said the Rev. Billy Joe Daugherty of Victory Christian Center in Tulsa, Okla.
One person who saw the Nov. 20 incident replayed on television was Oral Roberts, founder of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, now retired in California. Roberts penned a three-page letter of encouragement to Daugherty, which Daugherty read in church the next Sunday. Roberts wrote that he was reminded of a 1947 incident in which someone shot at him during a service, resulting in publicity that turned an unknown Tulsa evangelist into a national figure.
Daugherty was punched in the face minutes after finishing a sermon about the Apostle Paul and Silas being beaten and thrown into jail.
A man later identified as Steven Wayne Rogers came forward during the church’s altar call, motioned to Daugherty to approach, and then hit him, opening a cut over his left eye that required two stitches to close.
As security guards escorted Rogers out, Daugherty, his face smeared with blood, continued the service, publicly forgiving and praying for Rogers, whom he did not know.
The incident was videotaped by church cameramen, and was picked up by numerous national television news outlets.
Rogers was taken to the Tulsa jail, where Daugherty visited him.
Jail officials said that he was transported Nov. 23 to the Oklahoma Forensic Center at Vinita, a state mental institution. A spokeswoman at the institution said that due to confidentiality laws, she was unable to confirm or deny that Rogers was a patient there.
Rogers also was identified as the man who hit Oral Roberts’ son Richard Roberts, now ORU president, 15 years ago during a rehearsal for the “Richard Roberts Live” television show.
Daugherty said Monday that the incident had opened the door to talk about forgiveness.
“Everyone’s been hit by something,” he said, mentioning family breakup, job loss and sickness.
“The bigger issue, to me, is that God wants the world to know that when Jesus suffered far greater (than us), he chose to forgive.”
_ Bill Sherman
With `Narnia,’ Business Launched to Preview Films for Church Groups
(RNS) The highly anticipated premiere of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” also marks the launch of an effort to pre-screen films for churches and other groups.
The Barna Preview is the latest business venture for evangelical pollster George Barna, one intended to help market family-themed films to churches and educational groups. Barna Preview screenings of “Narnia” will be held in select cities Dec. 8, a day before the official release in theaters across the country.
Churches and other groups were able to buy large quantities of tickets in an attempt to help market the film.
“We’re going to do this three to four times a year, choose a film to rally faith and education communities behind,” said Mark Joseph, a partner in Barna Preview.
Joseph said he and Barna were inspired by the success of Mel Gibson’s grass-roots promotion of “The Passion of the Christ” to churches. They also want to prevent what happened to “Luther,” a faith-friendly 2003 film about Protestant reformer Martin Luther that failed to attract a large evangelical audience.
“Luther is what happens over and over and over,” Joseph said. “A great movie is made, but the Christian community doesn’t know about it until after it’s gone, so it doesn’t get a fair shot. Had people been aware, that could’ve been a number one movie.”
The project’s purpose, according to a Barna Preview news release, is to capitalize on “the potential of having church and educational groups regularly and intentionally use movies as a way of encouraging spiritually meaningful conversation.”
Though bookings for the first Barna Preview are closed, Joseph said their team is looking ahead to 2006 and considering upcoming films like “Charlotte’s Web” and “Amazing Grace,” the story of abolitionist William Wilberforce and John Newton.
_ Beau Black
Quote of the Day: Evangelical AIDS Activist Kay Warren
(RNS) “The evangelical church has pretty much had fingers in our ears, hands over our eyes and mouths shut completely. We’re not comfortable talking about sex in general and certainly not comfortable about talking about homosexuality _ and you can’t talk about HIV without talking about both of those things.”
_ Kay Warren, an evangelical AIDS activist and wife of megachurch pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren, quoted by the Associated Press. The couple hosted a national conference that coincided with World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.
MO/PH END RNS