c. 1999 Religion News Service

Christian music couple Amy Grant and Gary Chapman separate

(RNS) Contemporary Christian music artists Amy Grant and Gary Chapman have announced they are ending their 16-year marriage.”Gary Chapman and Amy Grant regretfully announce their separation after 16 years of marriage,”said a brief statement released Wednesday (Dec. 30).”They both ask for your prayers during this sad time and hope that you would respect their privacy.” Jennifer Cooke, one of Grant’s managers with Blanton/Harrell Entertainment in Nashville, Tenn., said Grant has just completed a 21-city Christmas tour with Christian artists Michael W. Smith and CeCe Winans and the Nashville Symphony.

Chapman, who records with Reunion Records, a contemporary Christian music label based in Nashville, Tenn., is the host of”Prime Time Country,”a program on The Nashville Network.

The couple has three children, Matthew, 11, Millie, 9 and Sarah, 6.

Attack on Pakistani mosque kills at least 16

(RNS) New violence between rival Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Pakistan has claimed at least 16 lives and left more than two dozen injured.

Monday (Jan. 4), gunmen on motorcycles sprayed a Shiite mosque in the village of Quereshi More in eastern Pakistan. The attack came as some 100 worshippers were finishing morning prayers to mark the start of another day of fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, the Associated Press reported.

Police said the attack was connected to Shiite-Sunni violence in Pakistan that has claimed hundreds of lives, mostly in Punjab province. The main combatants have been members of the Sunni Muslim group Guardians of the Friends of the Prophet and the Shiite organization Group for Shiite Muslim Law.

Most of Pakistan’s 140 million people are Sunni Muslims. Sunni-Shiite differences date back to the seventh century and a dispute over succession to the Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s founder.

The Associated Press reported that as many as four motorcycles carrying two men each were involved in Monday’s attack. Witnesses said the gunmen sprayed bullets into the mosque as they rode by.

As many as 13 of the wounded were reported to be critical.”We asked the government to provide protection because we felt threatened, but they did nothing,”said Taqi Hussein Shah, a Shiite spokesman.

Sect leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet to retire

(RNS) Elizabeth Clare Prophet, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, has announced plans to retire as spiritual leader of the Montana-based Church Universal and Triumphant.

Prophet, who founded the New Age-oriented church in 1974, said she would retire”sometime during the summer of 1999.”Prophet, who will be 60 in April, said cutting back on her”very busy schedule”would allow her to”spend more time with my 4-year-old son Seth and to take care of my health. I also look forward to spending more time with my adult children and my grandchildren.” Prophet, who in 1997 relinquished the position of church president, announced her plans at the sect’s annual New Year’s conference in Miami, Fla.

Christopher Kelley, a church spokesman, said Monday (Jan. 4) it was uncertain who, if anyone, would replace Prophet as spiritual leader.”It’s the teachings that hold this church together, not any one person,”he said.

Kelley said Prophet would”work out the details”of the church’s future”by the time she actually retires.” The church _ which teaches an amalgam of Christian, Hindu and Buddhist beliefs _ is a successor to the Summit Lighthouse, a sect founded by Prophet’s late husband, Mark Prophet. Kelley said the church has more than 230 congregations in nearly 40 nations.

Church membership is unknown, Kelley said. However, various academic and journalistic sources have noted that the church has lost tens of thousands of members in recent years after a nuclear holocaust predicted by Elizabeth Clare Prophet failed to materialize. Since the early 1990s, the church has been forced to sell much of its property in Corwin Springs, Mont.

Famed Russian Orthodox church is looted

(RNS) One of Russia’s oldest and most famous churches has been broken into by thieves, who took icons, crosses and other religious objects, an Orthodox church spokesman said Monday (Jan. 4).

The cathedral, the Church of the Intercession on the River Nerl, was built in 1165 and is located outside the city of Vladimir, about 100 miles east of Moscow.

Abbot Innokenty, the secretary for the regional diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, said the thieves took two icons, gold and silver chains, small crosses and medallions, the Associated Press reported.

He said church leaders were surprised the church was robbed because the icons are not especially valuable but said it was also vulnerable because it is in the midst of being restored and there was no money to pay for a guard.

A breakdown in law and order in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union has made icons and other valuable religious articles popular targets for thieves, who often try to smuggle them abroad.

Quote of the Day: Gerhart Riegner

(RNS)”Never did I feel so strongly the sense of abandonment, powerlessness and loneliness as when I sent messages of disaster and horror to the free world and no one believed me.” _ Gerhart Riegner, a former World Jewish Congress official in Switzerland, writing in his new book,”Ne Jamais Desperer”(Never Give Up Hope), about how his early account of Nazi plans to annihilate European Jewry was ignored by the U.S. State Department.

DEA END RNS