c. 2006 Religion News Service

Multnomah Publishers Acquired by Random House

(RNS) Multnomah Publishers, the Oregon-based company that published the best-selling “Prayer of Jabez” book five years ago, has been bought by Random House.

The acquisition, announced Aug. 3, strengthens the New York-based book publisher’s presence in the Christian book publishing industry, giving it a second evangelical Christian imprint.

Multnomah has published writers ranging from Focus on the Family Chairman James Dobson to Georgia megachurch pastor Andy Stanley. But it gained prominence when it released “The Prayer of Jabez,” a 92-page hardcover book by Bruce Wilkinson in 2001. The small volume was cited by Publishers Weekly as the top-selling nonfiction book that year, and it was named Christian Book of the Year two years in a row by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.

Multnomah joins Random House’s first evangelical Christian imprint, WaterBrook Press, which was created in 1996. Together the two will form a new WaterBrook Multnomah division within Doubleday Broadway, Multnomah and Doubleday Broadway announced.

The privately held companies, which closed the deal on Aug. 2, did not disclose the financial terms of the acquisition.

“The decision to sell Multnomah was a difficult one, but in Random House we have an acquiring publisher with a strong shared commitment to our mission,” said Don Jacobson, president and publisher of Multnomah, in a statement.

Added Stephen Rubin, president and publisher of Doubleday Broadway: “We look forward to growing Multnomah, as we honor its editorial heritage.”

Jacobson will be a consultant during the transition and integration of the two companies and Multnomah will relocate to WaterBrook’s offices in Colorado Springs, Colo.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Episcopal Splinter Group Sets Up Financial Plan for Members

(RNS) The Anglican Communion Network, a conservative splinter group of 10 Episcopal dioceses, approved membership donation requirements last week (July 31-Aug. 2) to fund the network’s missions and headquarters.

Under the agreement, each of the approximately 900 ACN-affiliated parishes are asked to give 5 percent of their operating budget to the network. Dioceses are asked to contribute 10 percent of their operating budget.

The Rev. Daryl Fenton, ACN’s director of operations, said the voluntary policy had already been in place, but was “clarified” last week athe network’s annual meeting in Pittsburgh.

The network was formed in January 2004 by conservative Episcopalians upset by the election of an openly gay man as bishop of New Hampshire and by what they perceive to be the leftward drift of the 2.2 million-member denomination.

Based in Pittsburgh, the ACN claims about 200,000 Episcopalians as members, according to a spokesperson.

Ultimately, the ACN hopes to break from the Episcopal Church and be named its own Anglican province _ with its own seminaries, churches and hierarchy, according to church watchers. It would then seek to replace the Episcopal Church as the American branch of the global Anglican Communion.

Since the Episcopal Church’s election of Katharine Jefferts Schori as its next presiding bishop, seven ACN-affiliated dioceses have asked to be put under the guidance of someone else.

The network has declined to disclose exact budget figures, but has raised about $4.5 million since 2004, according to a May news release.

The Episcopal Church expects to raise about $29 million this year in contributions from its 110 dioceses, according to church controller Alpha Conteh. Dioceses are asked to contribute 21 percent of their operating budget to the national church. The 10 ACN dioceses contribute far less, and at least four dioceses pledged to give nothing at all this year, according to Episcopal Church budget documents.

Approximately 50 percent of the ACN’s budget supports the network’s headquarters, including its nine-member staff. Most of the remaining money is directed toward foreign missions and starting new churches, according to Fenton.

_ Daniel Burke

Documentary Says Eruption May Have Caused Egyptian Plagues

(RNS) A new History Channel documentary, “The Exodus Decoded,” says a volcanic eruption may explain the 10 plagues and the parting of the Red Sea surrounding the Israelite Exodus from Egypt.

The documentary, which will air on Aug. 20, theorizes that the eruption of the massive Greek volcano on the island of Santorini sometime around 1500 B.C. can explain the miraculous events recorded in the Bible.

Canadian filmmakers Simcha Jacobovici and James Cameron use contemporary examples of geological mishaps to attempt to explain why the eruption _ believed by scholars to have been more than 100 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima in 1945 _ created plaguelike effects.

The filmmakers, however, make no claims about how or if the findings should affect people’s belief in the story, or whether God had a direct hand in the events.

The water in Egypt appeared to have turned into blood, they say, because ancient tectonic plate movements released natural gas into the waters of Egypt, similar to what happened in Lake Nyos, Cameroon, in 1986.

George Kling, a marine biologist at the University of Michigan, says the natural gas leak moved high concentrations of dissolved iron from the bottom to the surface, and rusted when it contacted oxygen in Lake Nyos.

The contaminated waters explain the next four plagues of frogs, gnats, flies, and dead livestock.

The documentary features scholars from various fields, but none fully agree with the theories of the documentary. “But many possess critical pieces of the puzzle to what emerges as a challenge to even the most skeptical,” said Jacobovici.

Although archaeologists disagree on the precise dating of the Exodus, the documentary pegs it to around 1500 B.C., during the reign of Pharaoh Ahmose.

“Skeptics who would like to regard the Exodus as myth might resist the idea that it actually happened, because this would imply that God indeed exists,” Jacobovici said. “Believers, on the other hand, may feel that a scientific explanation of the biblical story takes God out of the equation.”

_ J. Edward Mendez

Quote of the Day: Evangelist Billy Graham

(RNS) “Those are decisions only the Lord will make. It would be foolish for me to speculate on who will be there and who won’t. … I don’t want to speculate about all that. I believe the love of God is absolute. He said he gave his son for the whole world, and I think he loves everybody regardless of what label they have.”

_ Evangelist Billy Graham, in an interview with Newsweek magazine when asked if he thinks heaven is “closed to good Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or secular people.”

KRE/JL END RNS