c. 2005 Religion News Service
Michigan Kidnap Victim Says He Kept Faith
ZEELAND, Mich. (RNS) Before he left last week on a trip to Haiti, Phillip Snyder told a staffer at his family’s ministry he would see her when he got back _ unless he was kidnapped.
Snyder, 48, who was released by armed attackers Friday (Dec. 2) after being held for two days, knew kidnapping for ransom was an everyday occurrence in the impoverished nation where he has worked for decades.
And if he was taken, Snyder said, it would be part of God’s plan.
“He always said God would use him to witness to the kidnappers,” said Teresa Prange, who runs the downtown Zeeland office of GLOW International Ministry.
The nonprofit organization’s focus is on community development, working with Haitian pastors and community leaders to provide education and meals for more than 2,000 children there.
The father of nine was shot in the shoulder and kidnapped Thursday by assailants demanding $300,000 from his family. He was freed nearly 36 hours later after his oldest son, Chad, and a team of Haitian and U.S. officials negotiated his release.
While the kidnappers did receive money, it was a small amount, said his 72-year-old mother, Bettie Snyder, who has been a missionary in Haiti for more than three decades.
Bettie Snyder, reached on her cell phone there Friday, credited her grandson with playing a key role in his father’s quick release. She said she believes the kidnappers understood Snyder’s commitment to helping Haitians.
“I think it’s because of his work here,” she said of her son, who first went to Haiti 30 years ago to join his late father in mission work.
It was not disclosed who paid the ransom, but it did not come from GLOW, she said.
“There is no way we could have paid that money when we are feeding children with every dollar we have,” she said.
With the kidnapping behind them, the family has no plan to abandon their life’s work.
“We couldn’t leave our children. We love Haiti and these children. We have raised so many,” Bettie Snyder said.
_ Shandra Martinez
In Alabama Survey, Creationism/Intelligent Design Beats Evolution
(RNS) In the perenially prickly debate over the origin of human beings, close to two-thirds of Alabamians prefer the explanation in the Book of Genesis over the ideas of Charles Darwin, the results of a new poll show.
Roughly seven out of 10 respondents to the Mobile Register-University of South Alabama survey said creationism and intelligent design should be taught in public school science classes. Fewer than half think evolution warrants the same treatment.
As in much of the South, many Alabamians adhere to a brand of evangelical Christianity that interprets the Bible _ including the Genesis account of the creation of Adam and Eve _ as literally true. The survey results nonetheless surprised one self-described creationist.
“I would not have guessed that. It just seems to me that the view that holds the field is evolutionism,” said Dale Younce, an associate professor of Christian studies at the University of Mobile. Younce, who views evolution, creationism and intelligent design as all “faith-based,” thinks it appropriate for them to be taught together.
But Randall Johnson, a former member of a state science curriculum committee who opposed a biology textbook disclaimer describing evolution as “a controversial theory,” believes the results predictably reflect Alabamians’ religious background. Although creationism and intelligent design could be taught in some other course, Johnson said, they don’t belong in a science class.
Of the 405 adult Alabamians surveyed between Nov. 28 and Dec. 1, approximately three out of four identified themselves as “born-again Christians,” while 90 percent said they believe God takes “a direct and active role” in people’s everyday lives.
Backing for creationism, which holds that human beings are God’s direct handiwork, is far higher in the state than the country as a whole.
In a recent national survey by the Pew Research Center, a Washington, D.C., polling organization, only 42 percent of respondents signaled support for creationism, compared with 48 percent who accept evolution.
_ Sean Reilly
Volunteers From Coast to Coast Assist Flooded Baptist Church
NEW ORLEANS (RNS) Hundreds of volunteers swarmed over a wrecked church deep in New Orleans’ flood zone Saturday (Dec. 3), hoping to start its healing and that of the desolate neighborhood beyond with a furious outpouring of free labor.
By some counts, nearly 1,000 crisply organized volunteers from LaPlace, La., to Los Angeles laid gloved, healing hands on Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, which drowned under nine feet of water from Hurricane Katrina. They went after the church’s ruined sanctuary and first floor with crowbars and power tools.
In a ritual familiar to thousands of New Orleans homeowners, they tossed furniture and carpet, muscled kitchen equipment out the door and gutted walls to the studs.
Donated heavy equipment bulldozed the rubble into growing piles curbside.
The workers were assembled by PRC Compassion, a network of evangelical churches and nonprofits based in Baton Rouge that sprang into existence after Katrina to funnel aid into the storm zone.
PRC Compassion’s roots are thickest in Louisiana, which is covered with independent Christian churches. But aid has flowed to the agency from groups far afield, including Focus on the Family, the potent evangelical educational and political organization in Colorado Springs, Colo. Help has also come from the St. Louis-based Living in the Word Ministry of evangelist Joyce Meyer, said Gene Mills, one of the founders of PRC Compassion.
Born spontaneously in response to sheer need, PRC Compassion is driven by relationships _ by pastors networking rapidly with other pastors, then hurrying help to target areas, said Mills.
Its congregations are both black and white. On Saturday, they reached out to help the Rev. Fred Luter, a popular minister who turned around a dying church in the mid-1980s and who works easily across racial and denominational lines.
Now revitalized into a powerhouse congregation, Luter’s predominately African-American church had begun to stabilize and reclaim its neighborhood. Before Katrina, nearly 7,000 people worshipped there every weekend, Luter said.
PRC Compassion’s strategy recognized that Luter’s was a key church to target. Helping Luter now would permit his church to help others later, said Mills.
“He wants to be here. Once he gets back on line, he’s going to be a machine. He’ll turn around all kinds of lives,” Mills said.
_ Bruce Nolan
Psychological Study: To Reduce Your Stress, Reflect on Your Values
(RNS) Religious leaders have long encouraged their flocks to take time for reflection on important values, but now researchers at UCLA have another reason to encourage such a discipline: It apparently reduces stress.
In a study published in the November edition of the journal Psychological Science, researchers divided 80 undergraduates into two groups before asking each to perform a task under stressful conditions. Members of one group prepared by reflecting for a few minutes on cherished personal values. Members of the other group reflected on values they had said were unimportant to them.
Outcome: Only 51 percent of those who reflected on important values saw increases in their levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress. In the control group, 82 percent saw their cortisol levels rise.
“Our study shows that reflection on personal values can buffer people from the effects of stress,” said Shelley E. Taylor, a UCLA psychologist with a specialty in stress and health.
The study made no distinction between those who reflected on religious and non-religious values. For instance, in the category of those who pondered cherished values, some might have answered questions about the Bible or God, while others answered questions about secular topics such as community service work. In each case, subjects were reflecting on values they considered important.
Researchers suggested the study might point the way to further stress reduction techniques that don’t require the use of drugs.
The study shows that “thinking or … writing about important values can be stress-reducing and health-enhancing,” said David Creswell, a graduate student in psychology and lead author of the study. “Stress-management interventions may benefit by incorporating value-affirming activities in the arsenal of weapons to combat stress, potentially in combination with other techniques.”
Psychological Science is published by the American Psychological Society, a nonprofit organization that promotes the use of scientific methodology in psychological research. The UCLA team plans a follow-up study to explore whether reflecting on personal values improves the health of people with chronic illness.
_ G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Catholic Research Center Lists Ethical Challenges for 2006
(RNS) Creating a more candid judicial confirmation process and learning to treat new immigrants as neighbors rank among the top ethical challenges facing America in 2006, according to a Jesuit ethics center’s annual assessment.
The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, a research center at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, Calif., unveiled its National Ethics Agenda at a November roundtable event designed to reach educators nationwide.
Developed by professors, board advisers and staff members, the agenda highlights four additional issues: excessive compensation for corporate executives, managing energy resources wisely and fairly, educating delinquent youth and identifying legitimate heroes.
Markkula Center Executive Director Kirk O. Hanson noted a few attributes that he said mark the American value system: “American enterprise, a commitment to freedom and human rights (and) compassion for the poor.”
Living up to its values means reflecting them in the nation’s response to those six issues, he said.
“That American character is shaped by our responses to specific ethical challenges that face us as a country each year and our reaction to incidents that occur in our national life,” Hanson said.
“We’re still, for example, trying to understand what hurricane Katrina, and the way we as a country handled that disaster, … mean for our character. Were our disaster policies geared just to the rich and not to the poor? Are we now helping the poor as much as the victims of 9/11? Is even that the right standard? Those are all ethical questions that we’re working through.”
As the center has done for the past four years, ethicists and advisers to the center will again in 2006 encourage public discussion to identify ethical courses of action on each issue. At the outset, participants voiced concerns about the status quo.
On judicial nominations, for instance, the many players involved “are just not being honest about where (they) want to take the court,” said Terri Peretti, chair of the political science department at Santa Clara University.
_ G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Quote of the Day: Major George Hood of the Salvation Army
(RNS) “People admire what we do, but they would prefer to worship at a Baptist church or a Presbyterian church or that megachurch that’s in their neighborhood. They’ll donate money to us and volunteer to help, but they don’t want to worship with us on Sunday mornings.”
_ Major George Hood, community relations officer for the Salvation Army, noting that the organization is a church as well as a charity. He was quoted by Scripps Howard News Service.
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